


Human Nature

by Gryph



Category: Planet of the Apes (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Original Character(s), Other, Post-Canon, Sequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-11 12:04:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryph/pseuds/Gryph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/247505">Common Ground</a>. Burke and Virdon enlist the help of the Albans to travel to Kirtland AFB in their quest to find a way to return to their own time. The journey leads them through the ruins of the city of Albuquerque, where they discover just how far into the darkness Man has fallen. New surprises and danger await them in Kirtland, which might just hold answers they didn't even know they were seeking. Will the path finally lead them home?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Secrets

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Common Ground](https://archiveofourown.org/works/247505) by [Gryph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryph/pseuds/Gryph). 



> For Pam, who will be greatly missed

_I need another story, something to get off my chest_   
_My life gets kinda boring, need something that I can confess_   
_'Til all my sleeves are stained red from all the truth that I've said_   
_Come by it honestly I swear_

“We’ve already discussed this issue. The answer is still no.” Malachi’s steely eyes raked over the motley group of humans, angels, and apes that stood before the Council of Elders. Pete Burke and Alan Virdon exchanged glances, and Burke could tell from the set of Virdon’s jaw that he was not going to accept defeat easily. The journey to the site where Kirtland Air Force Base existed in their time was the next logical step in their quest for a way to return home. The faster-than-light engine in their ship, which had carried them a thousand years into Earth’s future, had been developed and tested at Kirtland. With the site so close, just twenty or thirty miles southeast through the ruins of the former city of Albuquerque. Virdon wasn’t going to be dissuaded.

Before any of them could object, a large, bald man sitting down the table from Malachi cleared his throat. The deep voice that rumbled out of his broad chest carried through the room despite his quiet tone. “Circumstances have changed, Malachi. I think we need to reopen the discussion.”

“Fine, Darius,” Mal growled, leaning forward on the table so he could see the other man more clearly. “Consider it reopened. What circumstances have changed, exactly? The city ruins they have to go through are still dangerous. Kirtland still could have high levels of radiation from the weapons it housed before the war. What has changed?”

“The Rephaim, for one thing,” Darius replied, waving at the gorilla and the chimpanzee who stood with the other petitioners. “Galen says that Misha has agreed to provide guides who know the city ruins well and are experienced in dealing with the dangers there.”

Burke couldn’t help but wonder how much the secret of the Rephaim may have influenced Malachi’s earlier rejection of their request to go to Kirtland. Or whether there were more secrets in the city that Mal didn’t want them to discover. He still had difficulty trusting Mal entirely, despite Zeke’s reassurances that Mal only had the best intentions.

Zeke spoke up. “And Alan is helping Gabe to build devices to monitor radiation levels. They’ll know if it’s dangerous without being exposed.”

Malachi’s eyes narrowed and he leaned his chin into his steepled fingers, regarding the assembled group with a cool gaze for a few moments. “And who else would you propose to take on this fool’s errand, Ezekiel?” he finally asked.

Zeke’s tawny wings fluttered, the feathers rippling with the movement, as the only outward sign of the way he bristled under his parent’s sharp rebuke. “Strictly voluntary. But I was hoping for a builder and tech expert. Jed has already volunteered as a healer, as well as Alan, Pete, Galen, and Misha. And myself.”

“Malachi, I’ve talked with Alan about what it is they hope to find at Kirtland.” Darius pushed back his chair and rose, then turned and walked around the table to stand with Zeke and his companions. “I think the expedition has merit beyond what they seek.” He paced back and forth in front of the angled bench, to look at every Council member as he continued. “I think that our reluctance to go beyond the boundaries of our own city has blinded us to what is going on in the outside world. Our fear of danger has crippled us, turned us into isolationists with our heads literally buried in the sand. Ignoring the dangers out there isn’t going to make them go away… or prevent them from showing up on our doorstep, as recent events have show us.

“If we think that Kirtland still houses materials that could be used as weapons, then I propose that we go and uncover it, before we find ourselves the target of those weapons. We’ve cowered down here for too long now. It’s time we stopped being afraid.”

A murmur rippled through the Council chamber.

“Reasonable caution is not _fear_ , Darius,” Mal interjected.

“And I agree with you, Malachi, that caution _is_ reasonable. But what caution requires of us is to make careful plans, to provide for as many contingencies as we can. And if we put the support of the Council behind this mission, give them full access to all the resources of the city, then reasonable caution will have been well served.” Darius’ next words were pitched more quietly, directed at Mal. “I understand your concerns, Malachi. But you are not the only one with something to lose here.” He inclined his head slightly toward Jed. “And our children are looking toward the future, not living in the past. Isn’t that what we want for them? For us all?”

Mal opened his mouth as if he was about to object to Darius’ implication that he was motivated only by concern for his son, then thought better of it. All too recently, he’d come close to losing Zeke. His son’s left wing still drooped almost imperceptibly as the joint that was damaged by Urko’s bullet continued healing. The wound in his right shoulder, the one that almost killed him, was fully healed. The more delicate structures of the wing would take longer. His lips pressed into a thin line as Mal nodded acknowledgement Darius’ point.

“All right.” He stood, his gray wings sweeping behind him, and spoke louder to the rest of the audience. “I want to see a detailed plan for this expedition—resources, manpower, contingencies. Once that’s been presented to the Council, we can make a well-reasoned decision on its merits. And Ezekiel, include a security detail of four in your plans. You aren’t going into possibly hostile territory unarmed. Levi?” He looked past the group to the grizzled man in the back of the chamber who stood at his call. “You’ll pick four of your best, but let them know it’s a voluntary mission. They can decline—if they know what’s good for them.”

“Thank you, Malachi,” Virdon said.

Malachi shook his head. “We haven’t said yes…yet. But you’ve got a chance to convince us.”

******

Burke raked a hand through his hair, reveling in the feel of its spiky shortness. After a year of pushing longer and longer bangs out of his eyes, the habit was still ingrained. Along with Virdon and Galen, he had spent more than a year of living on the run, surrounded by a society that made medieval Europe look enlightened. A society dominated by apes while humans were just another form of chattel.

The accident that had almost killed him, when the three of them had fallen into an underground station for a high-speed magnetic train, had also led them to Alba. Just outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, the city was an underground wonderland of advanced technology, populated with humans and genetically engineered angels. Virdon saw Alba as a chance to find a way to travel back to Earth’s past, to find a way home. Burke saw Alba as a place he could call home.

He put down the pad with the supply list he’d been reviewing and went to the servitor to fetch some coffee. As he raised the mug to his lips, he inhaled deeply. Even after weeks of having any food or drink at his fingertips—well, almost anything—he still appreciated all the things he’d missed over the last year. Coffee. Steak. Hell, meat of any kind. Now if he could just figure out how to convince the device to materialize a bottle of decent Jack Daniels.

Returning to the table while sipping the coffee, he picked up the pad and settled back onto the soft couch. He looked over the list again, wracking his brain to think of any situations they might encounter in the base that would require additional gear. Between the two of them, he’d spent more time at Kirtland. But his familiarity with the layout of the base was a thousand years out of date. He and Virdon were to meet with Levi later in the day to comb through the city’s historical records, hoping they could piece together a more complete schematic of where they were headed.

He dropped the pad on the table with a sigh and rubbed his eyes. Maybe Malachi was right; maybe this whole trip was a bad idea. Never mind that it’d been _his_ idea in the first place. In his initial excitement, all he could think about was that Kirtland represented a chance, albeit an astronomically slim one, of finding a way for Virdon to return to his family. He’d never shared Virdon’s pipe dream of returning to 1980. From the moment they’d woken in that abandoned bomb shelter after the crash, he’d known that _this_ planet was home from now on.

But whenever Virdon talked about his family, his wife Sally and young son Chris, Burke heard the ache, the desperate need in his friend’s voice. For Virdon’s sake, he vowed he would try to find a way back.

He gave a quick shake of his head to clear it. Imagining worse case scenarios for this mission was enough to make anyone pessimistic. They _were_ making progress, after all. The flight recorder disk that Virdon had carried around with him all this time finally yielded the data they needed to understand how they’d been thrown a thousand years into Earth’s future. More importantly, they also knew how—theoretically, at least—to reverse their journey through time. But theory and practice were two very different animals.

The door chiming pulled him out of his reverie. “Open,” he called.

“Pete!” Zeke crossed the room in a few strides and flopped onto the couch next to Burke. Burke held his mug up to keep from spilling coffee on himself as Zeke’s wing jostled his arm “Hey, I have something I want to show you. You busy?” The smile he beamed at Burke was practically blinding in its enthusiasm. And infectious.

Burke felt the corners of his mouth tugging upward. “Not particularly. What’s up?” He set the mug on the table.

“Oh no, no spoiling the surprise.” Zeke stood and held out a hand. “C’mon. You look like you could use some fun.”

Eyeing the angel suspiciously, Burke grasped Zeke’s hand and let himself be pulled upright. “Lead on.”

They left Burke’s quarters and headed for the central shaft that connected all the levels of the underground city. The shaft was capped by a giant dome of impenetrable transparent aluminum. At the bottom of the chasm, deep in the earth, were the city’s power plant and matter recycler.

Burke almost stepped out onto the platform jutting into the open air, used by angels for take-off and landing as they flew up and down the spacious chasm. Then he remembered that Zeke wasn’t going to be flying anywhere for a while yet and turned toward the lift instead. The first time Burke had flow with the angel, Zeke had carried him as he flew to the garden immediately under the dome at the apex of the city. The sensation of flying had been amazing, but Zeke’s wing was still weak. He saw Zeke’s smile falter and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

The lift arrived and they stepped into the cylinder. Also made mostly of transparent aluminum, the lift provided a panoramic view of the central shaft as it traversed the outer wall. Zeke pressed a button near the top of the bank, and they began to ascend.

“We going up to the dome?” Burke asked, trying to sound casual.

“Not quite. One level below it. You’ll see.”

Leaning his head against the cool surface, Burke watched the activity in the space around them; angels flying up and down, occasionally carrying packages or even humans. The sight still tripped a tickle deep in his gut.

The lift slid to a smooth stop, and the corridor it opened onto was plain and unrevealing. Zeke led him through the unfamiliar hallways, deeper into the outer ring of the level. When Zeke finally stopped in front of a door and thumbed the control panel, Burke was sure they must be at the very edge of the city. His eyes narrowed as he tried to imagine what could be so interesting this far from the heart of the complex.

When the door opened, the man who greeted them wore a smile that matched Zeke’s. “You’re finally here! What took you so long?” the younger man blurted out.

“I had meetings, Josh. I got away as soon as I could. Some of us have responsibilities, you know.” Zeke chided Josh, then pushed a hand into the center of his chest to move him out of the doorway. Josh’s short brown hair was a shade lighter than Zeke’s, and he had a slightly smaller build than the angel. But the resemblance was enough to know they were related. Joshua was Zeke’s younger brother—technically half-brother—child of Zeke’s human parent Levi, and Tirzah, Levi’s human mate.

The main feature of the workshop they entered was a large holographic imaging table, where Josh drafted plans for new structures in the city. A few physical models sat on shelves, along with some rolls of thin paper covered in sketches and doodles.

“Well, you didn’t tell him, did you?” Josh asked Zeke, then turned to Burke before his brother could answer. “Tell me he didn’t tell you.”

Burke laughed at Josh’s rapid fire questioning. “Tell me what, Josh? He’s locked down like Fort Knox. Very mysterious. But if someone doesn’t tell me soon what I’m doing here….”

“Okay, okay.” Josh held up his hands placatingly. “It’ll be worth it, I promise.” He turned toward a doorway on the opposite side of the workshop. “This way.”

With a last look of mock aggravation, Burke followed Josh through the door. On the other side, the room opened up into an enormous warehouse-like space. A couple of  prototype buildings intended to house the Rephaim in the desert surrounding the city dotted the open floor, but Josh led them past the buildings. As they came from behind the last one, Josh turned around and spread his arms.

“Well, what do you think?”

The craft in front of them looked like a cross between a tank and a sled. The heavily armored body was a squat rectangular box, with a slanted nose in the front and a window of what Burke guessed was more transparent aluminum. Instead of wheels or treads, though, it rested on a series of thick, disk-shaped plates. That it was meant to be a vehicle of some sort, Burke was sure. But how it was supposed to move was beyond him.

“It’s…ah… great.” He tried to sound enthusiastic, but he rubbed his chin as he tried to puzzle out what he was looking at. “But, uh, what is it?”

“What is it?” Josh repeated, incredulous. He bounded over to the craft and slapped a hand against its side; the dull thud had a metallic sound to it. “It’s what’s going to get us to Kirtland. It’s a hover craft.”

“Us?” Burked looked back at Zeke with a raised eyebrow.

Zeke shrugged. “Josh has volunteered to come along as our builder.“

“Hover craft, huh?” Burke stepped closer, until he could run a hand over the metal skin. “What’s a hover craft doing in an underground city, Josh?”

“I convinced the Council a while ago to let me build it. In case we needed to go outside the city. I don’t think Mal believed it would ever be used for that, but he was willing to let me have my pet project to keep me busy and out of trouble. I’ve still got a few finishing touches to put on it, and the fuel cells aren’t powered up yet, but if we get the expedition approved by the Council, it’s the perfect way to get there.

“The armor plating is thick enough to absorb fire from any weapons we have here in the city. The magnetic plates use the planet’s magnetic field to repel against, so it will run equally well over any terrain. All the moving parts are enclosed, so it’ll be unaffected by sand. It could even work underwater. It has seats for twenty, although some of that could be taken up by cargo, too.”

He continued to walk backward around the vehicle, drawing the others with him. “The main power source is solar, but it’s got a battery reserve.”

“Weapons?” Burke asked.

“None yet, but we can put whatever we want on it. Within reason." Josh looked between Burke and Zeke anxiously. Burke pursed his lips in thought. “Well? What do you think?”

Burke’s pensive expression broke into an impish grin. “When can we take it for a test drive?”

******

Virdon studied electronics schematics with Gabriel. Although he had a twentieth century degree in electrical engineering, his knowledge was ten centuries out of date. He had a lot of catching up to do.

But it felt great to be working again on something important, something that could help lead to a way home. Ever since they’d crash landed, it felt like his life had been nothing but physical labor and prison breaks. Not exactly what he’d envisioned when he’d signed up to be an astronaut for NASA.

He and Gabriel were tasked with designing a portable, personal radiation detector. If—no, _when_ they went to Kirtland, every member of the expedition was going to have to wear one. The level of residual radiation in the city ruins as well as in the base was one of the big concerns that Malachi and the Elders could use to deny their request. The threat was greater once they got inside the base, which had been used to store and test weapons-grade nuclear material right about the time the world had gone to hell.

“This shouldn’t be a complicated design,” Gabe was saying. “We just need to put it into a sensor small enough to be worn, where? On the wrist?”

“On the body core would be better than the extremities.” Virdon shook his head in amazement. “In my time, the smallest we could get a Geiger counter was something the size of a car battery.” At the blank look on Gabe’s face, Virdon delineated the dimensions with his hands. “About this big. And heavy. Not exactly easy to carry around.” He pursed his lips. “We also need it to keep track of total exposure, if that’s possible. Low levels of radiation can be tolerated for a short time, but we need to know when that passes a safety threshold.”

“I’d think we’d also want something that could differentiate gamma and x-rays from alpha and beta particles, don’t you?”

Virdon’s eyes grew wider. “Detectors in our day couldn’t do that. How do you solve the problem of the low interaction efficiency of the gamma rays with the halogen tube?”

Gabe chuckled. “No tube, Alan. You need to stop thinking in twentieth-century terms.”

“Well, that’s why you’re in charge of this project,” Virdon admitted. “I’m just along for the ride, hoping to learn something.”

“How many do we need?” Gabe begin calling up plans on his electronic pad, adjusting the design to meet all their requirements.

“Well, with the security Malachi wants us to take, we are already talking a dozen people. Better make twenty, just in case.” He shook his head. This expedition was taking on an entire life of its own.

“But first, a prototype, just to make sure it works.”

Virdon nodded. He knew he was pushing, anxious to get this show on the road. He closed his eyes and tried to calm his jangled nerves. He’d spent _three years_ preparing for the NASA mission that had brought him here. Waiting a couple of weeks before they could leave for Albuquerque shouldn’t be that bad.

Except it was. When he was getting ready to leave Earth, they’d had a definite plan. The mission to Alpha Centauri was supposed to take six months. They were supposed to be home in time for Christmas. He and Sally were going to take a holiday cruise. He was going to coach Chris’s baseball team the following spring.

All those plans were dashed when he woke up in that ancient bomb shelter. Or were they?

That was the funny thing about time travel. Even though he and Burke had spent the last year and more traveling through this crazy, upside-down world, they could actually arrive home on schedule. Or before they left. Or a decade after. But somehow, sometime, he would get back to his family. That belief was the only thing that kept him putting one foot in front of the other some days.


	2. Out of the Shadows

_All those memories, pain and anger, flood back one by one_   
_They must be just around the bend, they always come_   
_At night as I lay sleeping they come to me in herds_   
_Their lies remain, the dreams the same, it's only fleeting words_

Burke wiped a hand across his forehead and flicked away the moisture from his fingertips. The unrelenting sun of the desert hung high in the morning sky, making him squint against the glare off the sand. Behind him, the concrete wall surrounding Alba rose fifty meters out of rock and sand. From this close to the wall, he could barely see the glint off the metal dome. Next to him, Virdon stood with a hand on one hip, the other raised to shield his eyes as he surveyed the activity around them.

Pale canvas-covered yurts dotted the vista in front of them, intermingled with more modern structures of metal and composite materials. Gorillas dressed in colorful garb labored alongside humans and angels as they reassembled the nomadic village, upgraded with additions from Alba. Josh had put together a medical treatment building, a food preparation area, and a school.

Galen shuffled through the sand toward the two astronauts. He had abandoned his green tunic for the loose, light-weight robes the desert gorillas wore. He raised a hand in greeting. “I’m glad you could come.”

“Of course, Galen,” Virdon replied with a smile as he clapped Galen on the shoulder. “What can we do to help?”

“It’s Grul. He’s the... well, I don’t know exactly how to explain his role in the greater scheme of things. He calls his position the ‘Keeper of Prophecy’, which means he’s something of religious leader, although the tribe is ruled by a council of elders, something they must have remembered from their time in the city.

“Anyway, Grul’s main role is to pass down this oral tradition of the Prophecies, and to interpret their meanings for the masses—”

“Is this the same Prophecy that got them all following Urko?” Burke interrupted with a frown.

“One of them.” Galen shook his head. “They have an expansive set of prophecies that has been passed from one generation to the next since they started wandering in the desert. Elias is helping me to record the history of these people in a written form.” Galen tilted his head to one side. “And I believe that some of these prophecies are about _you two_.” He pointed two fingers at them.

“Us?” Virdon asked as his eyebrows shot upward. “Why would a tribe of nomadic desert gorillas have prophecies about _us_?”

Galen shrugged. “You’ll have to hear them for yourself. Grul has agreed to allow you to sit in on a recitation of Prophecy. The entire thing is accompanied by an elaborate ritual.” When Burke began to roll his eyes, Galen added, “It’s a great honor to be allowed to attend and witness the Prophecy.”

“All right. But if he pulls out a Ouji board and the table starts floating on its own, I am outta there,” Burke insisted.

“When will this ritual take place, Galen?” Virdon asked. He was anxious to complete their preparations for the trip to Kirtland.

“Now,” Galen answered. “There is an equally elaborate cleansing and purification ceremony that you must go through before you will be prepared to receive the Prophecy so you can understand its message.”

Virdon grinned “All right.” He looked toward Burke. “I’m game if you are.”

“Greeeeaaaat,” Burke drawled. “As long as this cleansing doesn’t include a high colonic, I’m in.”

******

Virdon watched a drop of sweat roll off the end of his nose and drip into the sand. Rivulets of perspiration slid down his bare chest and back to be absorbed by the waistband of the wrap that hung low on his hips. He glanced over at Burke, who perched with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Burke’s dark hair slicked against his head from the moisture that hung in the air as a fine mist. On either side of Burke sat Galen and Grul. The chimpanzee looked as wilted as the two humans, but the gorilla looked comfortable and relaxed.

The canvas tent was lashed closed to keep in the heat radiating from the large pile of stones in the center of the space. From a small bucket of water, Grul occasionally threw a ladle-full onto the stones, sending up a fresh gout of steam. They’d entered the small yurt around midday after shucking their clothes, with only a simple length of cloth wrapped around their hips to protect their modesty. They sat on slatted wooden benches that formed a ring around periphery of the tent. Burke had voiced a token objection to stripping down, but Galen had reassured him that they were just going to sit in quiet contemplation.

Virdon knew the theory behind this ritual. Growing up in Texas, he’d been fascinated, like many a young boy, about Native American traditions like sweat lodges and vision quests. One summer, he’d read every book the local library had on the subject. Stressing the body with heat, mild dehydration, hunger, and general discomfort, combined with meditation, freed the mind to wander. Whether the result was hallucination or divinely-gifted vision, he couldn’t say.

Grul reached into a satchel beside him and pulled out a handful of dried leaves that he threw onto the hot stones. After a few minutes, a narrow column of smoke drifted upward, spreading into a thin miasma. The old gorilla picked up two rawhide-wrapped bundles of jet-black feathers and waved them in a slow, arcing motion to draw the smoke toward him. He inhaled deeply with a contented sigh, then passed the bundles to Virdon, miming that the astronaut should copy his motions.

Virdon drew in a lungful of smoke through his nose; the sweet scent tickled at the edges of his memory. After a few passes of the feather bundles, he handed them on to Galen after Grul nodded his approval. He continued breathing deeply, trying to place the smell. Desert sage, perhaps, or a variant on it. Sage was used by many cultures in ceremonies for cleansing and purification.

He blinked as a strange sensation of expansion washed over him. His mind buzzed as his thoughts shifted to a higher level. He should have been alarmed as he realized the smoke was entheogenic—containing psychoactive substances intended to “create the divine” for those who inhaled it. But all notions of apprehension or panic drained away.

And the universe opened to show him possibilities.

******

Virdon’s gaze was drawn again and again to stare at the convoluted eddies of the smoke as it rose into the air. His eyes felt unfocused, but he could still see the complex patterns of twist and turns despite the dimness of the tent, lit only by the light filtering through the canvas. He became convinced that he could predict the path of the smoke, possibly even influence its wafting just by willing where it should go. His thoughts wandered as he wondered if the others realized that they could move the smoke with their minds, then snapped back to the smoke. The pattern, if he could just figure out its meaning, would tell him something important—but it danced away from him just out of reach.

“Alan?” Virdon looked through the smoke at his fellow astronaut. Burke’s expression was a cross between confusion and annoyance. “What are we doing here, Al?”

“Galen wanted us to do this ceremony—,”

“No, _here_. On this planet. In this crazy future. Running off into the desert searching for someplace that doesn’t exist anymore?”

Virdon’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Albuquerque. Kirtland.” Pause. “Houston.” Burke shook his head when Virdon winced at the mention of his home. “They’re all radioactive pits. Houston’s gone. Johnson Space Center is gone. NASA’s gone. Hell, the whole U S of A is gone.” His tone was harsh, his words clipped as he ticked off each place on his fingers. “Why are we chasing ghosts?”

Shock battled anger across Virdon’s face. “We can find a way home. We can travel back to the past.” His voice was strident and desperate.

Burke made a rude snorting noise. “Yeah. Right. Travel through time. Why don’t we just find some ruby slippers and you can click your heels together? You’d have a better chance.” He leaned forward, annunciating each word. “This. Is. Home. Now.”

A hand suddenly reached out to caress the back of Virdon’s neck. The soft fingers traced a familiar pattern through the fine hairs on his nape. His head whipped around to stare at the hand’s owner. “He’s right, Alan,” Sally Virdon said. “This is your home now. You need to let us go, me and Chris.”

Virdon eyes stung as his vision went watery. He reached a shaking hand toward his wife, to touch the long blonde hair that hung over her shoulders. “Sal?” his voice broke. “I can’t. I have to—I have to get back to you.”

Sally’s smile held an edge of melancholy. “We were okay, Alan. We missed you, but we got on with our lives. I had a good, long life. Chris grew into a wonderful man. Now you need to grab onto what happiness you can with both hands.” She clasped his arm to emphasize her words, but it was her pleading eyes that he couldn’t look away from.

She stood and leaned over him to brush a feather-light kiss on his forehead.

“It’s all right, Alan. I’ll always love you, but you can let go now.”

******

When the walls of the tent began to breathe, Burke realized something was wrong.  His head felt two sizes too big for his neck, and he was sure the slightest movement would start it wobbling uncontrollably, like the world’s largest bobble-head.

He gingerly swiveled his oversized noggin toward Galen, to ask him if he saw the canvas that surrounded them expanding and contracting, if he also heard the soft susurration of air being drawn in and pushed out. But as he opened his mouth to form the question, he was wracked by a searing, agonizing pain across his shoulders.

His spine arched as all the muscles across his back rippled and convulsed, throwing his arms out from his sides. He tried to surge to his feet, as an adrenaline-fueled flight-or-flight instinct overpowered rational thought. But when another wave of pain tore through him, his legs buckled and he sprawled in the sand on his hands and knees.

With a growl that ended in a scream, he wrenched himself upright to his knees and got a quick glance at his companions. Virdon and Galen sat placidly in their places, their faces fixed in expressionless masks, oblivious to Burke’s plight. Only Grul seemed to notice something was amiss; he leaned forward on his bench, his attention fixed on Burke with a curious tilt of his head.

Burke reached behind him to touch where the white-hot stabbing was the worst. He expected to feel the ragged edges of torn flesh, the sticky warmth of his own blood. Instead, his questing fingers found... the slick, glossy softness of large feathers.

Wings. He was sprouting his own pair of wings.

Another spasm of lesser intensity still pulled a groan from him, and he felt the feathers _push_ past his hand, as the wings spurted from his back. He struggled upright and staggered toward the door-flap of the tent. Although the pain was lessening by the moment, the confines of the tent—the weird, _breathing_ tent—were too close, too stifling. He needed air.

The direct sunlight was harsh after the filtered glow inside the tent, and he raised an arm to shield his eyes. The flexing of his shoulder shifted his newly grown wing so the feathers brushed against the back of his bare thigh and calf. He shrugged his shoulders, causing the muscles to bunch and ripple, and the wings fluttered in answer.

Burke focused on the muscles across his upper back again, on the stretch and contraction needed to move the wings, and they responded by beating up and down.  With a leap into the air, he was aloft. The sensation distressed him initially, and his flight path dipped dangerously close to the sand. He recovered his wits and put a burst of extra effort into driving his wings up and down; the ground fell away at dizzying speeds as he soared high into the crisp blue sky. He laughed out loud with unrepressed joy. The feel of the wind through his feathers and the hair on his arms and legs was exhilarating, almost erotic.

He flew for hours, surprised that despite the unfamiliar exertion of his back and shoulder muscles, he didn’t fatigue. As he circled Alba, the geodesic pattern of the dome twinkled against the sand, the sun reflecting off the transparent aluminum. A glare flashed into his eyes, making him squint painfully and turn his head away.

He abruptly dropped twenty feet. A pocket of clear-air turbulence, he thought; as a jet pilot, he knew the havoc that thermals and wind shear could wreak. He’d just leveled out when a feather slapped into his chin. Reaching for it, he pulled it away and examined it more closely. A brown feather, very close to the color of his hair.

The world lurched to the side as Burke suddenly tumbled pell-mell, falling out of control. Loose feathers slid across his skin, some of them painfully as the barbs of the stiff flight feathers left shallow cuts. Burke’s heart began to race, panic tight in his throat. His descent gained speed, although some part of his logical brain remembered that he would reach terminal velocity, about 150 miles per hour, in about fifteen seconds.

The denuded wings, mostly bone and skin, flapped uselessly a few times before they began to melt back into Burke’s back. The wind roared past at a deafening level. The horizon spun as he cartwheeled, plummeting to his certain death. Ironic, he thought, that as a jet pilot and astronaut, he should die because he tried to learn to fly.

Then the world went black.

******

Galen watched his friends settle into quiet contemplation. Both astronauts sat unmoving and unspeaking, watching the smoke and steam flowering from the rocks in the center of the tent. Their expressions grew slack, their eyes half-lidded, but not in sleep.

He yawned, thinking that he should close his eyes for just a few minutes to rest. After all, his participation in this ritual was only one of support. His human friends were the real beneficiaries. The words of the prophecy would be for them. He could close his eyes, just for a few minutes.

His eyes popped open in a panic; he was sure he had been snoring.

The tent was gone. Virdon, Burke, and Grul were gone. He was laying flat on his back, staring up at a night sky that sparkled with innumerable stars. A brighter band of white arched overhead.

He sat up, his body feeling strange and alien. He raised a hand before his face and gasped both at its child-like size and the white fur covering it. The skin of the palm was pink and translucent instead of the rough, thick, brown skin he was used to seeing. Almost like a human’s skin. But the hand was definitely that of an ape. Raising it to touch his face, his shock grew when he encountered a larger muzzle, a more pronounced brow ridge than his familiar features.

Something pushed into him from behind, followed by a raspy tongue roughly licking his back. With a yelp, he jumped to his feet and whirled on his accoster. Large blue eyes stared at him from a canine face. The animal had fur variegated from charcoal to pale gray with a tip of white on the bushy tail that flapped back and forth. It tilted its head in a distinctly ape-like expression of curiosity and a low, questioning whine escaped its muzzle.

 _You okay?_ the noise asked, although Galen didn’t know how he understood its meaning so clearly. The animal’s head came up to his chest even when it rested on four paws as large as dinner plates. If the wolf—no, not quite, the body was too wiry and sleek, more like a coyote—decided to attack him, it could easily snap his neck between those large jaws. But Galen didn’t feel any fear toward the animal.

“I’m... fine,” Galen said aloud, stammering in his confusion. His new voice was higher pitched, reminding him of how it had sounded in his adolescence.

The animal approached him again; Galen steeled his nerve to not retreat. It butted its head affectionately into his chest, and Galen instinctively reached up to bury his hands in the fur behind the creature’s ears. It sighed as a bliss-filled expression glazed its eyes.

Galen looked at his surroundings for the first time as he scratched the coyote. They stood in the middle of a dirt street; the husks of shattered buildings hunched in the shadows all around them. A hot wind blew, bringing the fetid stench of decomposition, and beneath it, the rustling of things moving in the ruins.

The animal’s ears perked up and swiveled as it raised its head to scent the wind. It barked, a harsh, sharp sound.

_Walkers. We should go._

The coyote lowered the front of his body, and Galen understood what he was to do. He grabbed handfuls of fur and swung a leg over to sit astride the coyote’s back. Then the animal rose and began to run.

The landscape flew by at a dizzying speed, much too fast for Galen to follow where they were going. He focused on the coyote’s head to keep from getting nauseous. Only when the ruins fell away to open desert did he look up at the rolling dunes of endless sand. When the coyote veered to the right, it took a few minutes for Galen to see the rock formation sticking out of the sand.

The entrance to the cave loomed up, a darker spot in the gloom. The coyote meandered up to the area in front of the cave, its nose to the ground checking for strange scents. Just inside the opening, he stopped and turned to look at Galen. He slid down from its back into the cool sand. Ducking its snout under his hand, the coyote led Galen deeper into the cave. With the other hand extended in front of him, Galen felt the rough-hewn table before he tripped over it. A small pile of banked coals gave off an almost imperceptible glow in a recess in the back wall. Galen searched the table until he found a candle and a small lighting stick next to it. Scooping them up, he shuffled carefully back to the fire for a light.

Once the candle flared to life, he quickly surveyed the spartan furnishings in what he knew was his home. A table and one chair, some tools for cooking and eating, a jug of water. Tucked away in an other crevice was a pallet. The coyote padded to this sleeping area and walked a circle in the dirt next to the pallet before curling up on the ground. It raised its head and whined at Galen.

_Sleep now. It’s late._

Galen reached over to the water jug and pulled a dipper of water from the half-full vessel. From the candle in his other hand, the meager light reflected off the surface of the water, and Galen glanced down at it.

Red eyes stared back at him.

He drank the water, then stepped over the coyote to lay on the pallet. He blew out the candle and settled down to sleep.

In his dreams, he saw human men, with no wings to propel them into the heavens, fall from the sky.

******

Grul watched the three strangers as they swayed and rocked in place, their eyes closed to guard the visions that the divine universe chose to reveal to them. He smiled, showing a mouthful of sharp, pointed teeth. He could sense their minds returning to the present moment, but with a channel to a greater awareness still open. It was time. They were ready to hear and understand.

_“When the life of Botis had spanned beyond the time of his brothers or his brothers’ children, or his brothers’ children’s children, he appeared one night at the village fire, his great Kai-outaim by his side once more. The animal’s fur had faded from dark gray to white, and its eyes once blue as the clear sky were clouded and dull. Botis’s fur, still white as sun-bleached bones, seemed to glow in the light of the fire. His blood-red eyes were sharp, seeing deep into the hearts and minds of all who fell under his gaze. ‘I bring you one last story,’ Botis told the elders when they questioned him. ‘Then I will return to the Paradise that waits for us all at the end of the path.’_

_“The elders wailed in protest. Surely if Botis had lived beyond three lifetimes, he would never perish. Botis heard their words and shook his head. ‘The universe is not so cruel as to curse me with an immortal life. All things in this world must come to an end, although not always the end of their choosing.’ The Kai-outaim howled at that and whimpered as it pressed its muzzle into his hand._

_“‘Behold,’ Botis cried, ‘from the stars will come an Emim, a man out of time, called the Ashima. He will fall from the sky and walk among those that he wishes to call his brothers. But he will be hated and reviled, for he will foretell the fall of their false Paradise. He will come to show a new way, for he will not know what has gone before. He will gather to him those who wish to walk out of the darkness. But that path is thick with thorns, and he will leave a trail of despair and death in his wake, for all will know great hardship.’_

_“The elders quailed before his words, for they could not imagine following an Emim with so grim a Destiny. When they had finished their rending of garments and gnashing of teeth, Botis spoke once more._

_“‘The Ashima will topple dreams and smash hopes. But there is a way he can avoid the anguish he will bring to himself and everyone around him. He must learn that to win forth a new future, a new world, he must learn to let go, to surrender. Only by giving up can he succeed.’_

“Here ends the last prophecy of Botis.”


	3. Lost Boys and Golden Girls

_It doesn't matter where they're going or wherever they've been,_   
_'cause they've got one thing in common it's true_   
_They'll never let a night like tonight go to waste,_   
_and let me tell you something, neither will you, neither will you_

“Why do we need four, Levi? That’s a lot of security for eight people.” Virdon frowned at the group lined up in the command center. The last time he’d had been there, the city had been under attack from Urko. Now, Virdon and Burke looked over the group of soldiers that Levi had chosen to go on the mission to Kirtland.

“Because you’re going into some extremely hostile territory. And we have no idea what the situation in Kirtland itself is going to be. If you want the Elders to continue backing this expedition, that’s their condition. The mission is officially under security jurisdiction. Eliana is in command.” He gestured toward a tall, dark-haired woman who stood at attention. With her stood a thickly-muscled man, a tawny-feathered angel, and another slightly shorter woman.

“Now wait a minute, in command?” Virdon objected. Beside him, Burke bristled but kept silent.

Levi lifted one eyebrow. “She’s very capable, Alan.”

“I’m sure she is, it’s just that I thought—”

“That you’d be in command?”

Virdon frowned. “Well… yes, actually.”

Levi sighed gustily. “You’re too invested, Alan. You have no objectivity.”

“That’s crap,” Burke interjected, shaking his head.

“Excuse me, sir,” Eliana said to Levi. He nodded for her to continue. She turned to look at Virdon. “I understand you’re used to calling the shots, sir, but you guys are still playing catch-up on ten centuries of history and tech. You don’t know the full capabilities of our personnel or equipment.”

“I appreciate that, Eliana,” Virdon replied in a tightly controlled tone. “But you don’t know the territory. You’ve never been to Kirtland. We have.” He waved a hand between himself and Burke.

“All due respect, sir, but not for a thousand years. You don’t really have any more idea of what we might expect to find there, or even the physical layout of the base than we do. Isn’t that right, sir?”

A flush climbed Virdon’s face; he folded his arms across his chest as he struggled not to let anger get the better of him.

Levi stepped closer and put a hand on Virdon’s shoulder. “I understand how hard this is, Alan. You’ll still direct the overall goal, but Eliana will have the final say on any tactical decisions.” Despite his stern expression, Levi’s voice was filled with sympathy. “She’s right. You are still a relative stranger to this time. It’s not that I’m questioning your judgment, but you don’t have enough facts to make good decisions. Regardless of your personal stake in this mission.”

Virdon’s stony-faced expression belied the conflict he felt. Part of him knew wanted to rage at Levi, insist that this was his mission, his command, as it had been for over a year on this planet, and three years before that in preparation for the voyage into space. Neither Burke nor Galen had questioned his lead since the crash, even when they followed him into danger.

And part of him felt relief that someone else was going to shoulder the responsibility for all these lives. He glanced over at Burke, whose expression said, _I’ve got your back. However you want to play this, I’ll support you_. The trust laid open in the other man’s face was reassuring—but also scary as hell. He was the reason why Burke and Galen were willing to risk themselves, and they all knew it. And where had it gotten them so far?

Virdon nodded curtly. “All right, Levi,” he acknowledged, his voice still tight. “Set up a briefing so we can get her up to speed.” He turned on his heel and stormed out of the room. Burke gave an apologetic look to Levi before going after him.

******

As Virdon strode down the hallway, Burke trotted after him. After a few yards, he grabbed his arm to slow him down. “Hey,” he let go when Virdon rounded on him; his superior officer looking like he was itching for a fight.

“What?”

Burke winced at his tone, but didn’t let go or retreat. “I, uh, I think we need to talk about what happened with Grul.” Since they returned from visiting the desert gorillas that morning, Virdon had been silent and brooding, a reversal of roles that left Burke no doubt that Virdon’s vision had been as disturbing as his own.

“What you’ve seen and experienced is what the divine universe meant for you to know,” Grul had explained when they had questioned him that morning, after sleeping off the effects of the ceremony. They’d woken in a cool tent, redressed in their own clothing. A small meal of bread and berries—not the traditional meat, for their guests’ benefit—had been set out for them to break their fast. Grul joined them shortly after they ate. “Only you can interpret its meaning in your own lives. What you saw,” Grul had pointed to each of them in turn, “would mean something completely different to me, for we have not lived the same lives.”

When the three of them were alone again, Virdon explained that the visions were hallucinations caused by the leaves Grul had cast onto the fire. “We were drugged, Galen!” he’d barked at him.

Galen had looked shocked. “I’m sorry, Alan. I didn’t know. Grul said that we might have visions, but he didn’t mention that he would be helping to induce them with drugs.”

“Al, take it easy,” Burke had tried to soothe the anger he could feel building in his friend. _I’ve definitely been hanging out with Zeke too much,_ he’d thought ruefully, wondering if the angel’s empathic abilities could “rub off” on him. “Grul thought he was doing us a favor, by showing us something his people hold sacred. It’s not like they took pictures of us in awkward situations while we were out.” Virdon had glared at Burke, but had remained uncharacteristically silent during the trip back into the city.

Now Virdon’s jaw tightened a fraction more, and just when Burke thought he wouldn’t respond, he said in a quiet voice, “No, we don’t.”

“SOP, Colonel. Events get debriefed. And given the way you’re prowling around here like a dog with a sore tail, I think the sooner you talk about this the better.” Burke shook his head at the irony of the situation. Virdon was the one who usually tried to get a tight-lipped Burke to talk about his feelings.

Virdon shook off Burke’s restraining hand. “At ease, _Major_ ,” he drawled, sarcasm heavy in his voice. “As you are so fond of saying, I don’t need to talk about it. It is what it is. We both heard what Grul had to say. I’m going to bring misery and death to everyone around me. Because I can’t let go of the past.” His voice caught, and he turned his face away from Burke.

“What makes you so sure he was talking about you?” Burke countered. He wasn’t going to let Virdon take on yet another ration of guilt that wasn’t his to bear. “As I recall, there were two of us that ‘fell from the sky’. How do you know I’m not this _Ashima_ character? Way I figure, I got just as good a chance of being this harbinger of despair as you do. Probably more so. We both know that I attract trouble like a cheap cologne.”

“No. It’s about me. I’m the one leading this mission. Making everyone march to my drum, always chasing ghosts,” he said, echoing the words the visionary Burke had used. “Except now I’m not even that anymore, because Levi sees how dangerous it is for me to be in charge. All I’ve managed to accomplish so far is getting Galen branded as a traitor and you almost killed.” He barked a dry laugh and passed a hand over his eyes. “Hell, maybe it is better for everyone if Eliana’s in command.”

Burke’s eyes grew wide during Virdon’s self-recriminating rant. “Damn, Alan.” His voice was low and thick. He’d never seen his friend so full of doubt about his ability to lead. “What the hell did you see?”

Virdon finally looked back at Burke, his eyes red-rimmed. “Just another person telling me to give up this crazy quest. To let go of the past and face facts.” He swallowed audibly in the quiet hallway. “There is no going home.” He stalked away, leaving Burke standing in the middle of the hallway.

******

The light in the central shaft dimmed noticeably as the lift dropped farther and farther in the bowels of the city. Burke leaned back against the wall in the now empty elevator and watched the levels of the city flash by. Virdon’s sour mood was infectious, and Burke needed to talk to someone about what he’d experienced.

Zeke worked in the city’s power plant, at the bottom of the five-hundred meter deep shaft that the city was built around. As he stepped off the lift on the power plant level, Burke could feel the sub-audible hum of the generators. The visceral evidence that something massive, producing enormous amounts of energy from the fusion of subatomic particles, crouched just beneath his feet was mildly unnerving.

The simplicity of the control room for the plant contradicted the danger and complexity of the city systems, a technological wonder that exploited the connection between energy and matter theorized in the mid-twentieth century. Discarded matter produced by the residents of the city, including human waste, was recycled as fuel through the fusion reactor. The energy generated in turn created new materials, including food and clothing, through the servitor replication devices. In Burke’s time, such a closed system was barely even in the imaginations of their best scientists.

Technicians sat at banks of computer terminals, monitoring every function of the reactor and recycler. Toward the back of the room, in a larger work area set off from the rest, Zeke hunched over screen. As he chewed on his bottom lip in concentration, he tapped a keyboard.

“Hey, Zeke,” Burke said when he got closer.

“ _Ahuvi_ ,” Zeke exclaimed warmly. “When did you get back?”

“Late this morning. Then we had a meeting right away with Levi.”

“So what happened out there with the Rephaim? Your message was pretty cryptic.”

Burke ran a hand over the back of his neck. “It’s a long story, and I could really use an ear to bend. Have you had lunch yet?”

“Not yet. I’ve been beating my head against a wall all morning trying to increase the efficiency of the reactor. All this power that we’re expending to assist the Rephaim is starting to put a strain on the system.” He shrugged. “But enough shop talk. You said lunch?”

“I was thinking a picnic up in the garden. I, ah,” he stammered, embarrassment warming his face, “I already packed some food.” He held up an insulated bag. “But if you can’t get away, I’ll understand.”

Zeke smiled. “You know, I think getting away from here for a while might actually help. Like one of those problems that you only come up with a solution when you stop thinking about it so hard.” He pushed himself away from the desk and stood. Holding up a finger to signal for Burke to wait a moment, he walked to a nearby workstation and bent to speak quietly with one of the technicians. Then he returned to Burke’s side. “Let’s go.”

The ride to the top of the city from the very bottom, a nearly ten-minute journey as the lift stopped at several other floors to let Albans on and off, passed mostly in silence. Burke dropped back into the brooding mood that he’d caught earlier from Virdon. Zeke watched Burke’s pensive mood warily but kept silent, wanting to let him reveal his story when he was ready. He could feel the confusion of emotions rolling off the other man.

They found an isolated spot in the garden near the west side of the wall encircling the oasis in the desert. After another ten minutes of Burke picking at his food in silence, he blew out a deep breath and cast a sheepish look at Zeke.

“Sorry. I don’t mean to go silent running on you. I’m just trying to work out in my head what the hell happened.”

“Tell me about it. Maybe I can help.”

Burke told Zeke, in fits and starts, about the “sweat lodge” ceremony that he, Virdon, and Galen had taken part in the day before, culminating in his hallucination and Grul’s recitation of an ominous prophecy. Zeke’s frown grew deeper.

“If you think you were drugged, maybe you should go to Jed and get checked out. Make sure there are no lasting effects.”

“I’m not worried so much about whatever weed Grul used to induce his ‘visions’ as I am about Alan’s reaction to the whole thing.” His voiced dropped. “It’s like he’s given up hope, Zeke.”

“But you never thought there was really any hope to begin with,” Zeke reminded him gently.

“Doesn’t matter what I think.” Burke pulled a few blades of grass from the turf and swirled them between his fingers. “A couple of months after we landed, we found a cache of computer equipment in a ruined city. We had to abandon it because the gorillas were closing in on us. I thought walking away from those computers was going to break Alan. But you know what he said to me? ‘If there’s one computer, there’ll be more. Two things help me endure this, Pete—the need to keep you in line and the hope of returning to my family.’” Burke ticked off two fingers. Then he closed one back into his palm. “He already feels like he’s failed me, that he couldn’t keep me from getting hurt.” He held up the remaining finger. “If he loses his hope, he’s got nothing left.”

“And that’s why you’re pushing so hard for this trip to Kirtland?”

Burke’s answer was almost inaudible. “Yeah.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes.

Finally, Zeke asked quietly, “So who do you think the prophecy is talking about? Do you really think it could be you?”

“Yeah, I do. Zeke, I had that ‘vision’ about falling from the sky _before_ Grul recited the prophecy. I never put much stock in all that mystical crap, but why would I dream that?”

Zeke raised an eyebrow. “How do you know Alan didn’t have the same vision?”

Burke thought for a moment then shook his head. “No. I think Alan’s vision was about home. But he won’t tell me anything more than that.”

“All right, and what about the prophecy itself? I don’t mean to be indelicate, but you both have had your share of tragedy following you around. But it sounds like the prophecy says this _Ashima_ will also bring a... oh, I don’t know, a revolution is the only word that comes to mind. A new age. You’ve both kind of already done that—for the Rephaim at least. And for this city.”

“Yeah, I suppose so. But that whole ‘he must surrender to succeed’ thing worries me. Where I come from, surrender means you’ve lost. And Alan seems to be taking it to mean he has to give up.” When Burke looked up at Zeke again, he didn’t need to be an empath to see the fear in his eyes. “What happens when he feels like he’s got nothing left to live for, Zeke?”

******

After lunch, Zeke needed to return to his work on the power system. Burke briefly considered seeking out Virdon again, but decided on a trip to the gym to clear the cobwebs from his head first. The training facility was more than just a simple gym. In addition to the usual space to lift weights and run laps, they also had a simulation room that used holographic technology to present any scenario that could be programmed into the computer. It was primarily used by Levi’s security forces to train for combat. Burke wondered if he could program it to simulate skiing at Vale, complete with snow bunnies.

He walked into the main large space, glancing over at the racks of weights. Jed had provided him with a weight machine in his quarters while he was recovering from the accident that had brought them to Alba. But his shoulder was completely recovered now. Used to high levels of physical activity as a habit in the military, he’d started coming to the facility to work out a few times a week.

Several of the weightlifting machines were in use, but his eye was drawn to the dark-haired woman using the leg press. Eliana was dressed in shorts and a wrap-around shirt that left her arms bare; her shoulder length hair was caught up in a utilitarian ponytail. The musculature of her shoulders and upper arms flexed as she gripped the handles beneath the seat, and Burke could see the definition in her thighs and calves as she pushed up on the heavily weighted sled. When he’d left Earth, women had been an integral part of the military, but still denied any role in combat. There were a few pilots in the Navy and Air Force, and when his mission had blasted off, women had finally been admitted to the astronaut program. But they weren’t combat trained. He shook his head with a smirk. Obviously, Alba was a lot more egalitarian.

He found an open spot on a mat and started stretching in preparation for a run. As he was loosening up his hamstrings, a shadow fell over him. He looked up at Eliana, who mopped sweat off her face then slung the towel around her neck.

“Levi tells me you guys were military back in your time.” The statement came out as a question, accompanied by an appraising stare that Burke found a little unnerving.

He climbed to his feet. “Air Force, before we got to NASA.”

“Air Force.” Her eyes narrowed. “So that means you were a pilot?”

“Yeah,” Burke replied.

“Well, flyboy, you want to work out together, maybe do a little sparring?” Eliana took a drink from a bottle of water. “They did still teach you guys hand-to-hand back then, right?” Her tone turned the question into a challenge.

He quirked an eyebrow. She reminded him of some of the brash, overly confident grunts and jarheads he had trained with early in his military career. “Yeah, sure, why not?” Burke looked around. “Should we put on protective gear?” He didn’t see any padded helmets or gloves in evidence.

“Are you planning on letting me hit you?” she asked cockily.

Burke smirked. “Nah, but I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

“Don’t worry about me, flyboy. I can handle a few love-taps. Assuming _you_ can hit _me_.” She dropped the towel and bottle on the floor and started circling Burke like a predator.

“I was raised not to hit girls,” he quipped back, but took up a defensive stance all the same.

“Then it’s gonna suck to be you.” She dropped lightning quick into a squat and swept a leg at Burke’s feet.

He fell backwards as his legs went out from under him but shoulder-rolled back to his feet a more wary distance away. She advanced on him with a flurry of punches that, even if he hadn’t blocked them, would only barely have touched him. She was testing his reflexes, sizing him up. Well, two could play at that game. He shifted from simply blocking, still nothing fancy, to returning blows. Like her, he wasn’t trying to actually hit her—not yet, anyway—but more to see how she reacted. He had reach on her by a couple of inches, but she was quick. Her style was unlike any of the traditional martial arts he had seen or studied back on Earth, and that made him a little nervous. But no-holds-barred street fighting had a pretty universal style. Hit the other guy more than he hit you.

Once he was warmed up, he started adding some kicks into the mix. He managed to hook a foot behind her knee, and she went down hard. He backed off as she flipped herself upright.

She scowled at him. “You’re taking it easy on me. You should have gone in for a killing blow,” she accused as they circled each other.

“You telling me you’re not pulling your punches?” he threw back at her with a jerk of his head.

Eliana smiled. “All right. Game on.”

Almost too fast to follow, she darted inside his guard and threw a punch at his chest. He caught her arm in a two handed grip and twisted it off to the side, realizing too late it was only a feign. The kick to the other side of his ribs as she let the momentum carry her down knocked him back a couple of steps. Not that the blow was hard enough to injure him; even in a full-out attack, she was still in control. She rolled and was on her feet again, advancing with punches and kicks that seemed to go everywhere. He blocked them, barely, but he was being pressed back.

He danced away from her, trying to force a break in her attack. She gave him some room. They were both getting winded, and glancing around, Burke noticed the others in the gym had all stopped to watch them. _Great_ , he thought, _spectators to watch me get my ass handed to me._

“You’re pretty good.” He swiped an arm across his face to mop up the sweat that threatened to drip into his eyes. “For a grunt.” As he said the last word, he struck, using a combination of fists and feet, trying to stay in that sweet spot where she couldn’t quite reach him to strike back. He avoided using the flying kicks and tackles that worked well with slow, heavy gorillas, because he knew she’d be able to sidestep them easily.

Then he saw the opening he’d been waiting for. She overreached as she tried to counterpunch, and he was able to twist her around and pull her back against his chest, trapping both arms. But before he could take her to the mat to finish the pin, she went limp in his arms, then pistoned backward with both legs. As they hit the mat, she drove an elbow into his solar plexus. His grip dropped immediately as the wind was knocked out of him with a whoosh. She rolled off and threw a stiff fingered punch that stopped just grazing his adam’s apple.

“You’re dead, flyboy.”

He looked like a beached fish, mouth opening and closing, hand clutching at his midsection as he tried to force air back into his lungs with a stunned diaphragm. Finally he managed a noisy gasp. Then another. After another minute, he was finally able to speak, even though his breathing was still labored.

“You’re on _our_ side, right?”

“Last time I checked.” She stood and held out a hand to him. “You ready to get up? Or do you need a healer?”

“Just give me a sec.” With a wince, he rolled up onto his side and pushed himself up to one knee. The he grabbed her hand and let her pull him the rest of the way upright. He rubbed gingerly where she’d elbowed him. “Remind me not to make you mad.”


	4. The Distance

_I come to save you, but I couldn’t remember your face._   
_So I closed my eyes and called out your name._   
_And when I found you, you were slipping away,_   
_So I had to do what’s best for you._

Galen wondered that he had never noticed before how chilly the environment was in Alba. He’d been spending more and more of his time out in the desert, living with the Rephaim. Even with their strange, primitive features, the Rephaim were closer to his own kind than the humans and angels who lived inside the city. And among the gorillas, he felt _useful_ , helping them to assimilate to their new circumstances.

He made a mental note that the carefully controlled temperature of the city would take some adjustment for the gorillas, who were used to the heat of the desert. Although the desert temperature did drop significantly after dark, so they weren’t completely inexperienced with temperature extremes.

It’s not that he didn’t _like_ the Albans, especially after all that they’d done for Virdon and Burke. In fact, he counted several of the other humans, and even some of the angels, among his friends. But in the city, he felt entirely superfluous and antiquated.

Now, he was the liaison between the Council of Elders and the Rephaim; when his duties required it, he returned to the city. This morning, he’d been asked to give a progress report on how the Rephaim were settling into their new home just outside the city walls. He’d originally planned to travel back into the city with Virdon and Burke, but after the fiasco of the prophecy ceremony the night before, he’d stayed behind to speak to Grul about what had happened to him and his friends. Grul had confirmed Virdon’s suspicion that they’d been exposed to a drug, then shrugged it off as a necessary part of the ceremony, to “open the mind to infinite mystery”. Judging by his mood that morning, Virdon was not likely to be as forbearing. Galen planned to go see Virdon that afternoon to try to smooth things over with him.

He exited the lift on the level that held the Council chamber as well as several other rooms dedicated to the city government. As he rounded a corner, he saw Burke and Virdon in deep discussion down a side corridor. He thought about calling out to his friends, but just then, Virdon shook off Burke’s hand from his arm, a dark, ominous expression on his face. He couldn’t hear their exchange clearly, but the argumentative tone was unmistakable, as was Virdon’s body language as he strode away. Burke watched him go, his shoulders slouched, then shuffled in a different direction. Galen wished he could follow his friends to find out what they had fought about, but he was already late for the Council meeting. And neither human looked like he was in a mood to talk right then.

Galen continued toward the Council chamber, his pulse quickening from more than the exertion of hurrying as he approached. The Council chamber was an intimidating room. From the heavy wooden doors that had to be opened manually, not under computer control, to the large round space dominated by an angled bench where the nine city elders—three men, three women, and three angels—presided over all the business that concerned the city. Back at the founding of the city, the Rephaim had had representatives as well, and the council had been balanced with equal numbers from each of the three races. But when the Rephaim had been expelled, the positions had been filled by humans, and the proportions now reflected the mating triad of humans and angels. He made another mental note; in due time, the Rephaim should be reinstated to the Council, given a voice in how the city was governed. And that, he was sure, would go over like a roasted cow at a wedding feast.

When he entered the room, the elders were already assembled, as were Joshua and Jedediah. Galen hurried to take his seat with the others. The conversations among the elders died as Malachi rapped a large wooden knob on a flat base.

“Today, the Council would like to hear about the progress of the gorillas,” Malachi’s strong baritone cut over the remaining din. “Galen, how are they adjusting to their new circumstances? Are they expressing any interest in moving into the city?”

Galen blinked, a little taken aback. “They are doing very well. All the villages have finished moving into the area surrounding the city. The medical attention they are receiving, as well as the clothing and other necessary materials, is really helping to take some of the pressure off of them to survive. And Elias and some of the scholars are starting lessons for all the children and any of the adults who are willing to attend.”

He paused, knowing that his next statement would ruffle feathers. “However,” Galen wrinkled his nose in distaste, “they are somewhat dissatisfied with the scarcity of game in this area. But no one is going hungry,” he added quickly.

Mal frowned. “I thought they were being supplied by servitors from the city for all their food now?”

“They have access to them, thanks to Josh, but most of them complain that the food from the servitors tastes unpleasant. They’re still hunting game and supplementing from the servitors when necessary.”

A murmur ran through the Council, but died when Mal held up a hand. He turned to the healer. “Jed, how soon can the existing population of gorillas be treated so they can resume a normal diet?”

Jed’s brows pulled together. He spoke slowly, uncertain. “I... I’m not sure they can be. Short bowel syndrome isn’t like a broken bone. The most successful treatment will be prenatally, so that no more gorillas are born with the condition. But before we begin treating any of them, I think we need to ask ourselves if we _should_.”

“Why wouldn’t we want to cure them?”

“Because eating flesh—the hunting, the preparation, the consumption of it during rituals—is an enormous part of who they are as a people, Malachi. If we change that, we would be making a fundamental change to the foundation of their society and their culture,” Jed said. Galen stared back and forth between the two angels, his mouth agape. He hadn’t considered the impact on the gorillas, but it made sense. He imagined the chaos in his own society if the vegetarian diet of his people was forcibly changed to include meat.

“Even though the original change was a radiation-induced mutation?” Malachi countered. “You indicated before that this short-bowel syndrome is a health hazard. Curing it would be for their own good.”

“Honestly, I can’t say that definitively. They have shorter lifespans than we would expect, but there are a lot of factors to take into consideration. Insufficient food, no medical care, constant exposure to the elements. Not to mention accidental deaths from the dangers of living as a nomadic tribe in a desert.

“I’m just not convinced that our personal distaste for their dietary practices isn’t the real issue here. How much do we want to change them to make them fit _our_ vision? And doesn’t that make us no better than our ancestors who manipulated their genes to begin with?”

“They have a genetic mutation, Jedediah. They weren’t always like this.” Mal’s voice deepened dangerously with indignation.

“Yeah, three-hundred years ago they weren’t. But three-hundred years is a long time, especially for a species that’s only a hundred years older than that.” He looked up and down the length of the Council table, appealing to them all. “Imagine if they decided that flying was the abomination and wanted to cure us of our wings? After all, we haven’t always been this way—”

“Your point is made, Jedediah,” Mal growled over the gasps of several other Council members. He sat back in his chair, fingers steepled under his chin. He fixed Jed with a piercing look. “We need to proceed with caution before making any such profound decisions about the gorillas. We _did_ learn from the mistakes of our ancestors about the dangers of meddling in things best left to the provenance of nature.”

“Why don’t we ask them?” All heads swiveled toward the voice that came from the back of the Council chamber. Josh stood and sheepishly repeated his blurted question. “Why don’t we ask the Rephaim what they want?”

Galen sent a quiet thanks to the gods. “If I may,” he spoke softly into the suddenly silent room, “I think a delegation of Rephaim would be an excellent addition to this Council.” When an angry murmur began to rise, he held up placating hands. “Not as full members—not yet—but to begin to have input into decisions that are made about their home. This city _is_ their home now, even if they aren’t living within its walls. They should have some representation with this august body, don’t you think?”

Malachi pursed his lips. “Would they even understand what is going on here, Galen?”

Now it was Galen’s turn to frown. “They are uneducated, perhaps even primitive, but they are not _stupid_ , Malachi. If someone takes the time to explain things to them, they can and will learn.“

“The Council will have to discuss this recommendation. Draw up a list of names, if you would, of your best choices for this delegation.” He rapped the wooden knob on the desk. “I think that is all for today, gentlemen.”

******

Virdon stabbed the control to open the door to his quarters. As the door closed, he resisted the urge to grab the nearest breakable thing and chuck it against a wall. In the last twenty-four hours, he’d been drugged, experienced hallucinations, and had the only thing that remained from his past—command of his and Burke’s mission—taken from him. And throw on top of all that, a prophecy, whether he believed it or not, predicting that he would be the agent of destruction for his friends.

He felt... helpless. Whatever illusion of control he had over his life, tenuous as it had been over the last year, was gone.

_Gone and turned to dust a thousand years ago._

His own subconscious mind had used the image of his wife to try to convince him of what Burke had known from the very beginning. There was no going home. Burke had told him over and over again. But he’d refused to accept it, had been unable to give up that last shred of hope to face harsh reality. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes against the hollow ache in his chest.

Sally. His beautiful Sally. Had she been afraid for him, worried for the months the mission was supposed to be away? Had she been frantic when their return date had come and gone? Had she been angry with him for going on the mission, knowing the danger? How long had she waited, believing that he would come home? Did she erect a tombstone over an empty grave after he’d been declared dead? Had she moved on with her life, found a new love... remarried?

He wasn’t sure which scenario hurt more. Had she been alone for the rest of her life, holding onto a futile sense of loyalty to her dead husband? Or had she found new happiness in another’s arms, taking out his picture with nostalgic sorrow a couple times a year, on their anniversary, on his birthday?

He hated the idea of Chris growing up with out a father. And he hated the idea of Chris growing up calling someone else “Dad”.  His son had been only eleven when he’d left; he had so much of his life ahead of him that Alan had missed. High school, college, marriage, children, a career. But Chris’s life _had_ gone on. He had done all those things, long before the bombs began to drop. Before the downfall of Man. Had he been happy? Had he blamed his absent father, his adult relationships tainted by resentment at being abandoned? Had he cried at his father’s memorial service?

Whatever had been their fates, it had all transpired whether Alan was there or not. What if he _did_ find a way home, only to return to his past ten, twenty years after they’d left? Did he really expect that he could just walk back into their lives as if nothing had happened?

When they’d first arrived in Alba, Malachi had brought up the concern that their return to their time could alter the present. For Alba, any paradox was a no-win situation. If Virdon and Burke changed history, the city and all its residents might never exist. But Alan had been so fixated on his own quest that he’d dismissed any thoughts about the damage he could do by returning to the past.

What if his returning home with knowledge of the future averted Armageddon? What if that knowledge catalyzed it instead, accelerating the timeline of Man’s destruction?

Oh God.

His legs folded beneath him and he slid down the wall. Could he even take the chance that he and Burke, instead of being the saviors of Mankind, became its destroyer? _The Ashima will topple dreams and smash hopes. He will leave a trail of despair and death in his wake._

Could he even take that chance with the fate of the world?

One last mission. If the trip to Kirtland didn’t give him any new answers, he would try to let go of the past and embrace his new home. But he had to know that he had done everything he could to try.

He buried his head in his hands and let the grief he’d denied himself for so long drown him.

******

Galen checked his friends’ whereabouts as he left the Council chamber. Burke was in the training facility, according to the central computer. Virdon was in his quarters. Trepidation faltered his steps as he debated which one he should go talk to. Burke hadn’t seemed as bothered that morning by his experience, but he was obviously occupied. And given that the two had argued not long ago, the mood of either man was uncertain.

He steeled himself and turned his path toward Virdon.

When the door opened, Galen was shocked at how haggard the blond man appeared. His eyes wrinkled with concern. Had the drug Grul used on them made him ill?

Virdon looked away, his hand still on the control panel as if he thought about closing the door on him, then stepped back with a ragged sigh. “Come in, Galen.”

Galen shuffled carefully into the room. “I don’t mean to offend, Alan, but you look terrible.”

Virdon shrugged and made a grunting noise. He settled in a chair and leaned his head back, pressing the heels of his hands over his eyes. “What do you what, Galen?” he asked flatly.

“I, uh,” Galen stammered as he settled on the edge of another chair, “I saw you and Pete in the hallway this morning. It looked like you were arguing.”

Galen watched Virdon’s expression close up like a folding fan, waited while the other man struggled in silence. Finally, Virdon spoke in a husky voice. “It wasn’t anything important. Just a disagreement.”

The chimp’s eyes narrowed, and he clucked his tongue. “You,” he said with emphasis, “are still a terrible liar. The Alan Virdon I know would say that anything that affects one of us affects all of us. We’ve been through thick and thin together, sacrificed so much for each other. Counted on each other. And now you want to bear this burden alone?” He huffed and sat back. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t let you do that.”

The finality of Galen’s statement drew a sharp laugh. “Galen—,” Virdon began, shaking his head.

“What happened to you yesterday?”

Virdon’s jaw worked for a few moments before his face crumbled with misery. “My wife—,” he choked out.

Galen’s own vision grew watery. “Oh, Alan. You are doing everything you can to get back to them.”

Virdon shook his head. “No.” He clenched his hands together in his lap. “She... she told me to stop. To stop chasing this pipedream and accept that I can’t go home.”

Galen sat up straighter. “Oh.” He tilted his head to one side. “What do _you_ want?”

“I want... I want to know that they had good lives, that they were happy and healthy and... and... and that they didn’t spend the rest of their lives waiting and worrying and hoping—,” his voice cracked and he couldn’t finish.

Galen reached over and squeezed Virdon’s shoulder. “Alan, we know that none of the horrible things that happened came to pass in their lifetimes or a dozen lifetimes later. They never knew, never suffered through that. And if you two have taught me nothing else, it’s that humans are incredibly resilient.” He tapped Virdon’s chest with his knuckles. “What does your heart tell you about them?”

“I don’t know, Galen. Part of me wants them to have moved on. But part of me is afraid that they did. And that they would have...,” he swallowed loudly, “that they’d forgotten me.”

Galen frowned, his nose wiggling in thought. “You think that you’ll be betraying them if you let yourself have a new life here, don’t you?”

Virdon’s head snapped up. “What?” His breathing grew harsher, like a drowning man gulping for air. “I... maybe I do. Wouldn’t it be?”

“Tell me this. Did you want to leave them, not return?” Galen asked urgently.

“No!” Virdon’s brows drew together darkly.

“Will you ever forget about them?”

“No.”

“Will you ever stop loving them?”

“N-No,” Virdon answered, his voice barely a whisper. A tear slipped down one cheek.

Galen knuckled Virdon’s chest affectionately. “Then I think you have your answer. It’s not betrayal to _live_ , Alan. Really live—not this half-life you’ve been existing in for the last year. I don’t think your family would want that for you any more than you’d want it for them.” He paused a moment in thought. “I think this kind of sadness can be a little addictive. If you let yourself be lost in it, you don’t have to take any responsibility, make any decisions. Don’t let yourself get lost, Alan. Because that _would be_ a betrayal.”

******

The first mission briefing with the full crew of twelve took place the next day. Burke came to Virdon’s quarters early. When Virdon opened the door for him, the younger man looked like a lamb at the entrance to the wolf’s den. He leaned one hand against the side of the door, his head hung down as he examined the floor.

Virdon gave him a quick nod and the ghost of a smile. “Hey Pete, come in.” Dark smudges under his eyes spoke of sleep lost. The conversations with his friends weighed heavily on his mind, and Virdon had spent much of the night wrestling with his rebellious heart.

Burke stepped tentatively into the room. “So.... Are we okay?”

“Yeah, we’re okay.” Virdon programmed two cups of coffee from the servitor, giving one to Burke.

Burke nodded as he accepted the coffee and sipped it, while they both settled into chairs. “And what about you? You okay?” He tried to sound nonchalant, but he watched Virdon carefully from beneath his eyelashes.

“I.. I’m getting there.” He took a deep drink of his coffee, letting the silence stretch out. Finally he took a deep breath and shifted nervously. “Listen, Pete, I think if this mission to Kirtland doesn’t pan out, we... well, _I_ should accept that we aren’t...,” he sighed and tried starting again. “I think we should settle down here, consider Alba our home.” Before Burke could respond, he pushed on. “I know Zeke already asked if you... we’d stay, and Galen seems to have found a place here, too. It seems to be the best home we are going to get. I could... _we_ could all have meaningful lives here.”

Burke’s brows knit together with concern. “I don’t think you should make any rash decisions. I mean, are you sure? Really sure?” he asked carefully, not wanting to open fresh wounds.

“It’s been a long time coming, Pete. But I need to put the past to rest, and that can’t happen until I face reality. Much as it pains me to say, you were right. _This_ is home now. I can’t keep trying to hold onto something that’s been gone for a thousand years.” His voice broke. “My family is... gone.” He choked out the last word as his composure cracked.

Burke knelt in front of Virdon and pulled the older man into a fierce clasp while he cried.

Neither of them talked about what they’d do if the mission to Kirtland was fruitful.

******

“We’ve equipped the hovercraft with a pulse rifle on a rotating mount, that can be controlled remotely.” Eliana pointed at the holographic schematic of their transportation.  “And we’ll each have personal weapons as well. Body armor and radiation detectors will be worn by everyone any time they exit the vehicle.”

Malachi and Darius, along with Levi, stood in the central security area along with the full crew who would be going to Kirtland.

Josh spoke next, bringing up a list on the heads-up display. “We’ve taken out the extra seats to make room for supplies—food, water, medical supplies, in addition to weapons, armor, explosives, equipment for digging. Pretty much everything but the kitchen sink.”

“And you are sure the battery reserves will last if you have to travel at night?” Malachi asked.

Josh raised an eyebrow. “Yes, sir. The craft’s been sitting in the sun charging for a week. The reserves are at full, and can power the vehicle for twelve hours at maximum drain. Recharging in full sun can take less than ten hours.”

“We are hoping the trip there only takes a few hours, but the variable is getting through the city ruins,” Virdon added. “Misha says there are clear ways that can accommodate the hovercraft, but it may still be slow going.”

“Like rush hour traffic on the Cross-Bronx Expressway,” Burke murmured.

Virdon continued. “Then we don’t know how long exploring the base will take. We’ve got a high-power radio transmitter, so we can check in from the transport. But we should be back in less than a week.”

Malachi nodded. “I’d like daily check-ins over the radio. No one goes off alone at any time.”

Eliana opened her mouth to interrupted, but Levi beat her to it. “We have security protocols in place already, Mal. My people know their jobs.” His tone was mild, a gentle admonition.

“All right, all right,” Malachi held up his hands in surrender. “Forgiven an old man for worrying.”

“Well, thanks, Malachi,” Burke quipped. “It’s so nice to know you care.”

 


	5. Stranger In A Strange Land

_Enemy of mine, I'll fuck you like the devil._   
_Violent inside, beautiful and evil._   
_I'm a ghost. You're an angel._   
_We're one and the same, just remains of an age._

The city rose like a specter, wavering in the desert heat. Before the war, Albuquerque had been a verdant, vibrant oasis in the middle of a wasteland of desert and rock. In the late twentieth century, when the men approaching it had last seen it, the city pumped millions of gallons of water in to irrigate green lawns, to fill shimmering blue swimming pools. It expended millions of kilowatts of electricity to fill every enclosed space with cool air to keep the residents comfortable.

In later centuries, the solar energy that relentlessly beat down was harnessed to power air conditions and irrigation systems. New species of plants that stayed green with less water reduced the demand for that resource, even as supply became virtually unlimited as a byproduct of nuclear energy production. In the twenty-fifth century, Albuquerque was idyllic, a Paradise surrounded by sand and stone.

But Albuquerque was also surrounded by government installations; places where weapons were developed and stored, where research on bending the laws of physics was conducted, and where the code that governed life was manipulated and enhanced. And because of all these things, when the war began, Albuquerque presented an irresistible target.

The bomb that was dropped on the city—more accurately, just east of the city limits—was not large. Albuquerque may have been a target, but it was far down on the list of priorities. The bombs remaining at that point in the war were small and dirty, releasing far more deadly radiation than initial destruction from a blast. While many of the buildings remained, every living thing sickened and died. Well, almost every living thing.

Whether the creatures presently dwelling in the crumbling city were descendants of residents who somehow survived the downfall of mankind, or where survivors from the surrounding areas who wandered into the city and found easy pickings among the detritus of the metropolis, no one would ever know. There was no history, oral or written, among the tribal groups who lived in the city. Five hundred years ago, radiation, deprivation, and isolation had ravaged the physical form and mental capacity of what passed for human beings who inhabited the city. And the black pit that they had tumbled into was too deep and steep-sided for them to claw their way back up into the light. Not in five hundred years, not in a thousand years, not in tens of thousands of years. They were a doomed species—no longer quite _Homo sapien_ —who didn’t know enough to go quietly into the night.

And without the presence of thinking residents capable of industry, the remains of the city succumbed to the elements.

Burke and Virdon leaned over either side of the pilot’s seat of the transport, peering out the large windows to study what remained of the city. Eliana, gripping the steering controls with both hands as she navigated over the shifting sands, was not oblivious to the somber mood of the two men.

When Zeke had taken him to the transparent dome that capped the underground city Alba, Burke had first seen the ruins of Albuquerque in the distance. Tall fingers of rusted steel, twisted and bent in arthritic agony, raked at the sky, the only remains of skyscrapers stripped bare by sand and wind. Now as the profile slowly grew larger in the window, they could see the piles of rubble scattered among a few squat shapes that still retained the outlines of buildings. And everywhere, the sand slowly encroached, reclaiming man’s folly back into the desert that it had tried to tame.

Both men were quiet, each lost in his own memories of the city as it was in their time, with green lawns and sparkling swimming pools, people and cars vying for space in the streets, when the hum of air conditioners and the hiss of sprinklers were ever-present background noises. And of course, it wasn’t just Albuquerque they were seeing in their minds’ eyes, but every large city that they had ever called home—San Antonio, Miami, Jersey City, Houston.

They’d been in the ruins of old cities before. Oakland. San Francisco. But this city was different somehow. Maybe because they’d both visited it as it once existed, maybe because they now knew the specifics that had led up to its destruction. Or it could be that they had entered those cities on foot and not riding in a piece of thirty-first century technology, stocked with weapons and armor.

Eliana steered the vehicle a little to the right, shifting the view of the city in the other direction. Misha’s gorillas had provided detailed maps of which routes were open enough to allow the transport to pass through the southern section of the city, where the metropolitan areas were the thinnest. To the north, the city was built up into the rocky hills, preventing passage around the city. The other obstacle to reaching Kirtland was crossing the Rio Grande. Although according to Misha, the river was now barely more than a stream, especially in late summer when it might not be flowing at all.

“Well,” Burke murmured, his eyes still locked on the view, “if this is the height of the tourist season, I don’t think we need to worry about traffic jams.”

“Once we enter the city limits, we’re going to have to go slow,” Eliana told them. “I’d feel better if we could put some people out on point to let us know if we’re about to turn down any dead ends—”

“No,” Zeke cut her off. He leaned a hand on Burke’s shoulder and looked out the window. “It’s too dangerous. Misha says the natives are very violent. Anyone we put out there might as well have a big target painted on their chests.”

“So instead, we have a big target painted on the transport,” Eliana groused. “Outstanding.”

Burke smirked at her sarcastic tone. She sounded just like the jarheads he’d known back in his time.

“All right, flyboy,” Eliana addressed him, “how about you take the wheel? Josh says you’re the best at driving, and some of these spots might get tight.” She pushed a button on the main panel and slid out of the chair, making room for Burke to replace her.

He settled into he seat and took the steering wheel in a practiced grip. The hovercraft handled like something between a jet and a Mack truck. The slightest turn of the wheel caused the craft to respond quickly, even though it needed a fair amount of room for maneuverability. He touched the same button to take off the automatic pilot and felt the thrum of movement vibrate through his fingers as they folded over the controls.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “please fasten your seatbelts, observe the no smoking signs, and return your seats and tray tables to their upright and locked positions. Arrival in Albuquerque in approximately five minutes.”

Virdon shook his head at the confused looks of their friends as he took a seat and pulled the harness over his chest. Eliana folded herself into a seat next to the command controls and buckled herself in. She initiated the heads-up display that overlaid the front window with a filmy, semi-transparent map. A blue path wove through the grid outline; their best guess at a viable route based on Alba's databanks combined with Misha's information. A small blinking dot showed their current position.

Actually entering the city was a gradual thing; no clear boundary demarked the city limits. Instead, the sand gradually gave way to small piles of concrete and steel rubble, and the piles slowly grew until they were passing between partially intact buildings lining discernable streets. Burke slowed the vehicle to a crawl as long morning shadows fell across their path. When the lane closed in around them, Burke’s entire body tensed with sudden, sharp focus. He worried his bottom lip between his teeth as he adjusted the wheel with tiny, precise movements, but his hands were sure and steady.

“I told you some of these passages got tight,” Eliana said as she sat forward with concern.

“There’s tight,” he squeaked as he swerved slightly to avoid a girder sticking out from a building, only to bring the craft perilously close to a brick wall on the other side, “and then there’s threading a needle.”

“It opens up a bit after a few hundred meters,” she reassured him, even as she reached out to brace herself when he negotiated a turn barely big enough to accommodate the vehicle’s length.

“Good thing, because I don’t think we packed any Crisco.”

After a few more harrowing near-misses with debris, the path opened up as promised. Patches of asphalt and concrete peeked up through the sand and rubble, and the twisted remains of metal light poles or sign scaffolding occasionally stood like silent, lone sentries on either side of the road. Virdon slipped off his seatbelt and, holding onto the others' chairs, stumbled his way to the front of the cockpit.

"What do you think, Pete? Could this be the I-40? Or Rio Bravo Boulevard?" Virdon stuck a finger toward the map display, as if he were trying to find any familiar landmarks in the simple lines.

Burke shook his head. "Those roads may not have even existed by the time the city was bombed, Alan. For all we know, they drove flying cars and didn't need roads, like in the Jetsons."

"Well, whatever it is, if this holds out, we should be able to get through the city in no time."

Burke hated to dampen Virdon's returned good spirits and excitement. But he knew that overly-optimistic tone all too well. "Yeah, just don't count on it. The center of the city was pretty heavily built up. All it's going to take is one tall building collapsed over the road, and we are going to be looking for another way to go. And my triple A membership expired a couple centuries ago."

"Then let's not stop to change any tires," Virdon shot back, mildly annoyed with Burke's pessimism.

As they crept along at a cautious pace, the mood inside the craft remained subdued. None of the Albans had ever been outside the city or its immediate environs. Both human and angels sat quietly, craning their heads to see out the large window that wrapped around the front. The two apes, Galen and Misha, were the only ones who seemed nonplussed by the city ruins, although Misha's head swiveled back and forth as he scanned the vista, alert to any possible danger. When he noticed the shapes moving in the deep shadows thrown by the piles of rubble, his eyes narrowed, but he kept quiet, not wanting to raise unnecessary alarm.

******

Burke eased the hovercraft to a stop when the thin dirty ribbon of the Rio Grande River came into view. The brown surface moved sluggishly, spreading out to cover over a quarter mile of flat ground, surrounded on either side by steep banks where the flow had eroded into the rock over the centuries. But the water sat low in its bed, tamed by the summer heat.

At one time, the road they had been following turned into a bridge over the river. Although the supporting pillars in the middle where long gone, they could see broken pieces of the concrete span scattered like children's blocks along the banks.

"Well," Burke turned toward where Virdon and Eliana conferred with Misha and Josh, "anyone got any bright ideas on how to get down there?"

The drop to the edge of the water was about fifty feet down a sheer slope covered with scree beneath the larger chunks of debris. A conventional wheeled vehicle would have no chance of navigating it safely, but only Josh knew the full capabilities of the hovercraft and the terrain that it could handle.

"Misha, is there anyplace where this bank isn't as steep?" Virdon asked.

The gorilla's brows furrowed together. "We have not been much further south than this, but there are places to bring the craft across to the north," he answered slowly. "But I do not think the hov-er-craft," he stumbled over the word, "would be able to get there. Most of the paths are much narrower than the ones we have been travelling."

Eliana addressed Burke, "Pete, is there any way at all that we can pilot the hovercraft down that slope?" Like the other Albans, she had spent her entire life underground and had no experience driving any sort of vehicle.

"I don't see how. We try to go that close to vertical, and I think we'd be in danger of flipping over. But this is Josh's baby."

Josh shook his head. "No, Pete's right. All the repulsors are on the bottom of the craft. They automatically adjust power when we go up and down slopes, but this is more than...," he let the sentence die as he got a strange look on his face. He walked over to the main computer panel next to the navigational controls and started punching buttons.

"Josh?" Eliana asked, one brow raised.

His hands continued to dance over the keyboard. "Hang on. I have an idea." The computer beeped a few times as he entered variables. He rubbed a hand over his chin as he considered the answer he'd been given. Turning back to the others, he blew out a gusty sigh.

"Josh?" Eliana asked again, clearly impatient.

"Okay, according to the computer, this will work. Assuming of course that I've remembered all the variables correctly, like the loaded weight of the hovercraft, and the top speed that can be achieved at full power—"

"Josh!" Eliana exclaimed, "what's the idea?"

"Well, right now the magnetic repulsors are set at a pretty low level, but they can be adjusted in strength. Normally, the computer adjusts each one automatically as we move over uneven terrain to smooth out the ride. But I think if I can switch them all over to maximum strength at the right moment, and we can get enough forward momentum—"

Burke interrupted, his eyes growing wide. "You want to try to jump this thing right across that chasm!"

The protests erupted immediately from the entire group.

"Wait a minute! Hold on! I'm not talking about some crazy stunt. The computer says it'll work—and by a comfortable margin. We won't so much _jump_ across as we will _float_ across. As long as Pete can get us up to sixty-five kilometers per hour before we reach the edge of the lip, we will have enough momentum to get us safely to the other side. Then we cut the repulsors—gradually—and come in for a nice, soft landing." He cleared his throat and looked sheepishly at the ground. "In theory."

Virdon shook his head. "In theory."

"Like Evel Knievel over Snake River Canyon," Burke quipped.

"Oh, and we'll need to lighten the load a bit by having everyone with wings fly across instead."

Jed perked up at that. "Fly?" he protested. "Out there?" The four angels—Jed, Zeke, Gabe, and Nethaniah—all shifted uncomfortably.

“C’mon, Jed, it’s not like the air is toxic or anything. And if the four of you fly and each carry a passenger, that will reduce the weight by close to a tonne.” He waved a hand to encompass the whole vehicle. “Any extra will help.”

Eliana nodded, having made a decision. “All right. Galen and Misha should probably stay inside, since they have no experience being passengers with an angel. I assume you’ll have to stay to operate the repulsors,” she looked at Josh, who nodded, “and I’ll stay behind to drive. Everyone else, buddy up.”

“Whoa there,” Burke interrupted. “Josh said ‘Pete’, not ‘Eliana’. I’m driving.”

“Not this time, flyboy. My command, my risk to take.”

Burke pointed an accusing finger at her. “And exactly how many jets have you brought in for landings? This thing may not be a lawn dart or a Porsche, but I’ve got the most experience with planes and fast cars. You said so yourself that I’m the best driver on this rig!”

Eliana crossed her arms over her chest and cast a narrow-eyed glare at him. As the moment of silence stretched out, Burke crossed his arms as well.

Virdon tried to break the stalemate. “We all share the danger here, Eliana. And he really is the best person for the job.”

She pursed her lips, then finally spoke. “I’m still staying.” She turned to Zeke. “I think it’d be better if you didn’t try to carry a passenger. Your wing is strong enough to carry you that distance, but I don’t want to put extra stress on it with a passenger.”

Zeke looked like he was about to protest, but Jed interjected. “I think that’s a good idea.”

“All right, people. We’ve got a plan; let’s move like we have a purpose,” Eliana called out, setting everyone in motion.

******

Once the group of angels and humans left the hovercraft, the vehicle felt strangely empty and quiet. They were going to wait on this side of the river until the vehicle had landed on the other side, to prevent any mishaps should the landing go badly.

“Everybody buckle up,” Josh said unnecessarily. “This could get bumpy.” He glanced at Burke, who was busy checking over the control panel, a habit ingrained by years as a pilot and an astronaut. “Not that I don’t have complete confidence in you, Pete. Just I never had anything like this in mind when I designed her.”

“I’ll handle the take-off and landing, but everything in between is up to you, buddy,” Burke replied.

With a curt nod, Josh took the seat near the computer panel and pulled the harness around him. Eliana and the two apes hurried to take seats and strap themselves down.

Burke flipped on a reverse view camera and began backing up the vehicle to get enough room to achieve the necessary speed. When the computer beeped to let him know he had reached the calculated starting point, he continued for a few more seconds just to be safe. He stopped the vehicle and did another final check of all the readings. Then he shook out his hands and cracked his neck. With a final gusty exhalation, he turned to Josh. “Ready?”

“As we’ll ever be.” Despite his nervousness, Josh couldn’t suppress a grin, which Burke returned. “Hit it.”

Burke nodded, then turned his full attention back to the controls. He’d cleared away heads-up display except for a small window that showed the vehicle’s speed, the distance to the edge of the river bank, and the distance to the far side. He pressed the accelerator pedal steadily; the hovercraft slid forward in a slow but smooth crawl.

As the number representing their speed increased at a faster and faster pace, the other two numbers on the display decreased just as rapidly. The chasm grew in the front window as they sped toward it, and Burke could sense Josh tensing in the periphery of his vision. When the speedometer hit sixty-five kilometers per hour, it flashed from red to green, but Burke kept up the pressure to go faster still. Then the first distance readout hit zero. Josh flew into a flurry of activity, his hands dancing over the controls as he powered the repulsors to full strength.

The hovercraft dropped suddenly, eliciting small gasps from the occupants as they jerked against the harnesses that held them in their seats. Then it began to climb and gravity reasserted itself. Burke eased off the accelerator; with the magnetic field aligned completely against the downward pull, there was nothing left to power the vehicle forward. Their forward momentum would have to be enough to get them to the other side.

Burke watched the second distance display blur by as it sank toward zero and, when his heartbeat started pounding in his ears, realized he was holding his breath, his hands locked on the steering controls. When the hovercraft began listing gently to the right, he instinctively leaned left. He felt the subtle shift as the craft reached the apes of its trajectory and began to descend. The wall of the far bank fill the window, and Burke wondered if they had the altitude to land safely.

“Josh—,” he warned.

The second distance countdown flashed red as it reached zero. Josh pressed a control just as the back end of the hovercraft bounced over the edge and the right side of the bottom slid over the ground, throwing up dirt. A hollow metallic whine echoed through the vehicle as they bottomed out on the buried remnants of asphalt. The passengers were thrown forward against their harnesses, then flung left as the other side impacted on the ground. Burke grunted in pain when his wrist wrenched as he wrestled with the steering controls. He heard an abbreviated shriek from behind him and a thunk as something hit the floor. The hovercraft skidded to a stop.

Burke threw off the harness, wincing at the movement of his left hand, before Josh even finished asking, “Is everyone all right?” He stepped around the fallen suppy container and reached Eliana in two long strides. She pressed a hand to the right side of her forehead, trying to stem the blood that flowed freely down her face.

“I’m okay,” she responded as Burke bent over her. “Just a cut, but it’s bleeding like a son of a bitch.” He nodded acknowledgement to Galen and Misha, who looked shaken but unhurt. He heard Josh signal the others, telling Jed that there were injuries, as he reached for the first aid kit stashed under the main console. He fumbled with the closure with his off-hand, cradling the injured left one against him. When it opened, he grabbed a package of gauze and ripped it open with his teeth. Eliana moved her hand to replace it with the gauze, and he could see that the laceration was deep, but not wide. She pressed the pad over the wound as Burke took out more gauze to wipe away the blood from her face.

She managed a wry smile. “Nice driving, flyboy.”


	6. Anybody Listening

_There's more to life than what we have known_   
_And I can't believe I've spent so long_   
_Living lies I knew were wrong inside_   
_I've just begun to see the light_

Josh stood on the bank of the gorge eroded by the flow of the Rio Grande River and watched the four dots flying from the opposite shore grow larger. He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun that was slightly past its zenith. Within a few minutes, he could make out individual angels and their passengers. Gabriel with Virdon were in the lead, followed closely by Nethaniah with Matthias. Jedediah, carrying Kezia, lagged a short distance behind, flying next to an unencumbered Ezekiel.

"Why is it," Galen asked as he emerged from the hovercraft just behind Josh, "that no matter how hard I try to stay on the ground, I keep ending up in midair?" The skin around his muzzle and eyes still had a gray cast, and he held onto the side of the hovercraft for dear life.

"Oh, I don't know, Galen," Josh replied with a smirk, sparing only a glance at him, "you should try it with one of those guys. It's pretty exciting stuff."

Galen's face went even paler and he closed his eyes dramatically. "Oh, no, no, no, I don't think it'd be anything of the sort."

Gabriel set Virdon down on the ground then alighted behind him. "How bad are they hurt?" Virdon asked anxiously as the others landed.

"Nothing serious. Pete's got a sprained wrist and Eliana has a cut on her head." Josh trailed off as a look of concern crossed his face, and he pushed past Virdon. Jed and Zeke had just touched down, and Zeke doubled over as he gasped for air, his features twisted with pain.

"Damn it, Zeke," Josh swore, slipping his arm under Zeke's uninjured shoulder. "Why didn't you say you weren't up to flying that far? You should have ridden with us."

Zeke straightened up and took a deep steadying breath, the tightness in his jaw and brow relaxing with a conscious effort. "I saw that landing." He nodded toward the craft. "Any more weight, and you wouldn't have made it." He waved Jed away when the healer reached for his weakened wing. "Go tend the others inside. I'm just outta shape from sitting around on my ass too long."

Jed frowned, but turned to climb the steps to the transport. Virdon, Galen and the others followed right behind him.

Zeke leaned on Josh until they reached the side of the craft, then he pulled away to run a hand over the armored hull. "Is she damaged at all?"

"'She'?" Josh quirked an eyebrow.

"Pete says all flying ships and fast cars are 'shes'."

Josh smirked. "Figures." His expression turned serious. "The computer says there's no damage to the propulsion engines or repulsor plates. The only thing we lost was a coat of paint. We can head out whenever we want."

"Good." He started up the steps, then paused and turned to clap Josh on the back. "Nice work, little brother."

Now that Zeke's breathing had returned to normal, he finally went inside. He didn't want Burke to see how much the short flight across the river had cost him in physical exertion. His wing still ached, making him glad that he was the empath and not Burke. But he could sense the worry in Josh and Jed.

Jed knelt in front of Eliana, running a dermal regenerator over a nasty cut on her forehead. A pinkish layer of foam that would accelerate the growth on new skin filmed over the gaping laceration. A small patch of dark blood stained the collar of her uniform. Next to her, Burke nursed his left wrist, his face pale. Zeke could feel the anxiety still radiating off him.

He crouched next to the injured man. "Hey, you okay?"

Burke barked out a wry laugh. "Not my best landing, that's for sure. I think I got a zero from the East German judge."

Zeke laid a hand on Burke's shoulder, subtly projecting a calming aura. "Everyone and everything is in one piece. I think you did just fine."

Burke frowned. "Yeah, but I'm going to have to do it again on the return trip, and now I've got a bum wrist. I don't think I can even drive right now, let alone perform another stunt like that."

Jed finished with Eliana and shifted to Burke. "You'll be good as new in a few minutes." He ran a scanner over Burke's wrist and clucked his tongue. "Yep, a bad sprain. Nothing broken." He turned the device off and set it down on the floor. "Gonna do this the old fashioned way."

Jed gingerly took the injured wrist between both his hands and closed his eyes in wrapt concentration. Burke grunted in wonder as the pain slowly dissipated. After a few minutes, Jed opened his eyes and released Burke.

"How does it feel now?" he asked, staggering back to slump into one of the chairs.

Burke flexed his wrist experimentally. "Still a little stiff, but the pain is gone. That's amazing, Jed."

"Good. Just take it easy for a while. Don't get into any wrestling matches." He yawned hugely, covering it with the back of one hand. "If we are ready to move on, I'm going to take a little nap."

Burke made to get up, ready to retake the pilot's seat. Virdon pushed him back down. "You heard the man. Take it easy. My turn to drive," Virdon said with a smirk.

"Yes, mother."

******

The concrete lip of the bunker peeked out of the scrub-covered hillock like old bones half buried in the desert. A drift of sand and rubble obscured most of the door. The bulk of the hovercraft stood between the desert and the area where they would soon be working to clear the entrance. It cast a long shadow from the setting sun.

Virdon surveyed the blockage with Josh. "And we're sure this entrance will connect with the main complex?" Josh asked him.

"According to the schematics, it should. Assuming nothing is caved in. In my time, this was the entrance to the research area." He pointed to the south toward a flat area of sand. "That was a landing strip for visiting brass. There used to be a hangar over there." He pointed a little closer, then turned toward the east. "And the motor pool was there. This entrance was also used by airmen going on leave to the city."

Virdon remembered the last time he'd been to the base, before his first mission into space. He been sent as part of the team to test the design of a lander for possible exploration of Venus. Based on the successful Soviet _Venera_ program, the _Aphrodite_ was to be NASA's first attempt at a landing on Earth's nearest neighbor in space. They'd spent a month in the desert running the lander over every terrain available—sand, rocks, even off of sheer cliffs—to determine if its suspension could handle the rugged conditions on the surface of Venus. 

That was his lasting impression of Albuquerque and Kirtland—sweltering heat at the height of summer, with temperatures at night that plunged into the fifties and sometimes even forties. Although the administration area and barracks were located in a compound on the northern edge of the base, the research labs, testing grounds, and storage areas were buried deep in the rocky foothills southeast of the city.

Once they cleared away the debris, they still faced a significant challenge to getting into the base. In Virdon's time, all hatches leading to the outside were foot-thick hardened steel, and it was unlikely that the previous residents had left the door unlocked. They'd have to cut through the door with a laser, unless Gabe could find a way to disable the lock.

"Well, we should get started first thing in the morning clearing this rubble," Josh said. He looked furtively around the quickly darkening desert. "Eliana wants everyone buttoned up inside the transport before the sun goes down. Just to be safe."

Virdon nodded. The trip through the city had been disturbing. While he was driving through the city east of the Rio Grande, he spotted deeper shadows flitting through the dark places in the ruined buildings. But when he tried to look more closely to see what was moving, they melted into the background. At first, he thought his imagination was producing boogeymen based on the Misha's dire warnings about things living in the city that were no longer truly human. Then Josh had leaned over the back of Virdon's seat and murmured _sotto voce_ , "Are you seeing what I'm seeing, Alan?"

"I was beginning to wonder if I was really seeing it at all," he'd replied just as quietly. "What is it? Animals? Or people?"

"Let me see if I can tune the sensors to find out." He'd returned to the seat at the computer console.

"What's going on?" Eliana had asked from behind them.

Before Virdon could answer, Josh had spoken. "We are seeing some movement in the ruins. I'm recalibrating the sensors to see if I can figure out what it is."

"It is the _Shedim_ ," Misha had interrupted. All heads had turned toward him. "They are the animals in human form who live in the Desolation. They do not think, do not build, do not create. They know only killing and eating and destroying. These are the creatures that we hunt for food and to control their numbers."

After that, the atmosphere inside the hovercraft was more subdued, with a tense undercurrent as everyone scanned the view outside trying to glimpse the _Shedim_. Misha couldn't tell them how far outside of the city the _Shedim_ might roam, since none of the gorillas had ever been east of the city. Josh had reprogrammed the sensors to check for life signs; they detected that _something_ lived in the city, but nothing ever approached the hovercraft. And the computer had stopped sensing anything of significant size once they left the eastern edge of the ruins. It would give them warning if anything approached.

Virdon rested his hand on the firearm at his waist as he watched the sun touch the horizon. Coyotes and snakes weren't the only wildlife they needed to be wary of in the nighttime desert.

******

"What do you think, Gabe?" Eliana asked the fair-haired angel as he crouched in front of the door's locking mechanism. Clearing away the sand and rocks had revealed a large steel hatch. Bits of white paint still clung to the metal near the bottom where the obstruction had protected it from the scouring desert wind. Further up, the bare metal shone through, largely free of any rust or corrosion, courtesy of the dry, arid environment. The edge of the door was flanged, providing a seal that kept out the sand that insinuated itself everywhere.

“It’s an electric lock with a rotating encryption key. If we hook up an external power source, I think I can tweak the mechanism to override the code. It’ll take a little while, but we should be able to get in without cutting open the door.” He looked up at Eliana. “Which also means that we can close and lock it behind us, to keep... ah... anything from following us in.”

“Good. We’ll secure the transport and set up an alarm in case anything disturbs it.” She shifted the armored vest covering her torso so it settled more comfortably on her shoulders, then touched her link bracelet. “Alan, how’s it going in there?”

Virdon’s voice came through a moment later. “We are just about good to go. Everyone is geared up, and we’ve distributed the other equipment between us.”

“All right. Gabe will have the door open shortly, so let’s start assembling everyone.” She wanted the team ready and alert before the door was open, in case any nasty surprises were waiting for them inside.

Meanwhile, Gabe was on his own communicator. Shortly, Josh and Burke emerged from the transport; Josh carried a small metal case. He crouched next to Gabe, and they began hooking up the power supply.

Burke stopped next to Eliana, one hand on his hip as he rested the butt of his needler rifle on the ground. He jerked his chin toward the other two. “So, the wonder twins here figure this thing out?”

“Yeah, they should have it open in a few minutes.” She touched the bandage on her forehead self-consciously. “How’s the wrist?”

Burke flexed it and smiled. “Good as new.” He hefted the weapon with two hands. “Just in time, too, if I’m gonna have to carry this thing for very long.”

“Just a precaution, as is the body armor.” They both turned as the rest of their companions filed out of the hovercraft and gathered around them. “Once we get inside,” Eliana addressed them all, “no one goes off alone. And keep the chatter on the link to a minimum. We’re going to limit our initial exploration to six hours. That should give us enough time to scope out if the area is safe from radiation hazards and narrow down the areas that warrant further investigation. But I want to be out of there long before the sun sets.”

The others nodded. Malachi and Levi had insisted during the check-in last night that they not remain in the base after dark. Just in case any of the desert’s nocturnal residents got curious.

A loud click drew their attention back to the door, which stood slightly ajar. Eliana tucked her weapon into a ready position as Josh packed the power supply back into its case. Once both he and Gabe were on their feet, she gave Gabe a nod. He tugged on the handle to the door, eliciting a loud squeal from the metal hinges as it slowly opened. They could hear the sound reverberate down the corridor inside.

Eliana flicked on the light integrated under the barrel of the rifle and pointed it into the doorway. The light from the still rising sun, just above the horizon in front of them, did not penetrate very far into the dark corridor. The powerful light source illuminated forty or fifty yards, but all it revealed was a straight corridor that continued into the darkness.

“We find any orcs or a magic ring in this place, I’m not going to be the one to try it on,” Burke declared in a loud pseudowhisper. “ _The precious!_ ” he screeched in a gravelly falsetto. Everyone looked at him strangely. “Wow, I guess the classics aren’t so classic anymore. You guys need to read more.”

******

The corridor was wide enough that a small vehicle could have travelled along it. The cement floors and metal walls, as well as the high ceilings, amplified the echoes of their footfalls, making everyone self-consciously tread more quietly. Eliana and Virdon took the lead, with Matthias and Kezia watching their rear. Ranged in the middle, Josh and Gabe operated sensors that would detect motion and heat signatures, to give them some advance warning if anything was living in the base.

After two hundred yards, the corridor branched at a four-way intersection. Eliana walked to each exit and pointed her light. “Which way?” she asked Virdon.

“Straight ahead. That should lead us to the center of the base; hopefully we can find the command center.”

“All right, keep sharp now. I don’t want anything coming at us from these side corridors once we are past.”

After a while, they found a series of several small rooms off the main corridor. Each one was given a perfunctory search for anything of interest, and then the doors were closed and secured. Another couple of hours passed during the room to room hunt. As they finished with a storage room full of ancient electronics components, Eliana called for a brief rest stop. She looked at Jed. “How are we doing on radiation exposure?”

“Nothing above normal background at this point,” Jed answered after consulting his equipment. “I’ll let you know if it starts to rise.”

She quickly checked with the others to make sure everyone managing well. When she got to Misha, he put a hand on her arm, drawing her closer. "We are not alone here,” he said with nervous glances up and down the corridor.

Instinct brought her weapon up and ready as her head whipped around. “What do you mean?” Before Misha could answer, she turned to Josh. “Josh, any readings on life signs?”

Josh pulled up the sensor slung on his belt and peered at it closely. “Not a peep other than the twelve of us. Not even a mouse.”

“Exactly,” Misha said mysteriously, bringing Eliana’s attention back to him. “There are no vermin. No sign of even their spoor. No dust, no cobwebs. My people have explored enough ruins in the city to recognize areas that are abandoned and those that are occupied. Someone is living here.”

Virdon shook his head. “If the base has been sealed, maybe the environmental systems keep it clean. Or there could be an automated cleaning system.” He thought of the small maintenance robots who scurried around Alba scouring any dirt or trash.

Misha’s brows knit together in thought. “I suppose it could be,” he admitted, although he sounded skeptical. “But there are other things. Jed says our hearing is more sensitive than yours. There are... noises that are not regular like the sounds of machinery, but so quiet, like whispers.”

“I’ve noticed the sounds, too,” Galen added, wide-eyed. “But the air doesn’t smell of occupation. It’s old smelling, stale, but not the musky scent you get when there are animals living in a place.”

Eliana considered these statements, then made a decision. “All right, we are going to proceed as if the place is occupied. I want everyone on full alert, weapons ready. Josh, keep a close eye on that equipment and give a yell as soon as you see _anything_. Assuming we are talking about sentient beings and not animals, I want to try to make peaceful contact if possible. But I also don’t want to take any chances that they may be hostile.”

******

The hallway narrowed as they approached another thick, vault-like door that stood open. Leading the group, Burke and Virdon pointed their rifles through the door, shining their lights into the darkness beyond. The light was swallowed by a larger space that opened on the other side. If their schematics were accurate, they may have reached the command center of the complex, where they were most likely to gain access to any information that might still be stored in ancient computer banks. Burke cast a nervous glance at Virdon. Exploring the complex had become an entirely different mission once they discovered it was still inhabited. Eliana had shifted to the middle of the group so she could confer silently with Josh as they moved.

Virdon held up a closed fist—a signal to halt. He pointed at his eyes then at Burke and himself, and finally made a circling motion with one finger at the others. _We'll go in and look; everyone else follow once we know it's clear._ Burke went first, rushing through the door and flattening himself against the wall just inside. Virdon followed, ending up pressed against the wall on the opposite side.

Virdon pointed at Burke, then at the ground. He turned the finger at himself and then deeper into the room. _Stay put and cover me; I'm going to check it out._

The giant shadow he cast as he moved in front of Burke's light slowly grew smaller as he edged step by step into the room. Virdon swept his gun back and forth to illuminate as much of his surroundings as he could. When a desk came into view, he pulled the light back to it and walked closer. The top was covered with a glass screen and a keyboard integrated into the surface. Another sweep revealed a cluster of several desks nearby. Virdon leaned his rifle against the table and called out, “Come on in. This is it.”

Burke waved the others into the room before he jogged over to join Virdon. He tucked his rifle under his arm so the light focused on the keyboard. Virdon scanned the entire thing for a moment, then punched a couple of buttons experimentally.

They both jumped when the screen lit up, accompanied by a beeping sound that reverberated loudly in the large room. Then they exchanged looks of unbridled excitement.

“It works!” Virdon exclaimed.

“Look at that!” Burke thumped Virdon on the back.

Burke took a few steps back toward Eliana and others. “This place has power. Look around on the walls, see if we can find a light switch.”

They scattered toward the perimeter of the room to search. Burke was examining a panel of controls on the wall when he heard the sound of scuffing footfalls, the clatter of metal on metal, and a pain-filled grunt. He immediately slotted his rifle against his shoulder and pointed the light back toward the center of the room.

“Hostiles!” he heard Eliana shout.

Bodies flashed through the path of this light, too fast for him to distinguish friend or foe, other than the absence of wings.

“Everyone back to the door!” Eliana commanded, but Burke was already moving toward where Virdon had stood at the console—where a rifle layed on the ground, abandoned.

“Alan!” he screamed. He heard a muffled yell that sounded like his name just before a band of strong arms clamped around his chest, pulling him up short.

“Too many!” Zeke said in his ear, his voice full of quiet desperation. Burke continued struggling as Zeke pulled him backward toward the exit.

“Alan! Alan!” he shouted again, trying to twist out of Zeke's grip, but the angel was too strong.

In a flash, he was jerked through the doorway, and the thick hatch slammed shut. Josh spun the wheel to engage the latch.

The stricken looks of anguish on the faces of the rest of the group were enough to tell Burke all he needed to know. He sagged against Zeke, the only thing keeping him upright.

Virdon was gone.


	7. Bitter Sweet Symphony

_Well I never pray but tonight I'm on my knees_  
 _I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me,_  
 _I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, I feel free now_  
 _But the airways are clean and there's nobody singing to me now_

"We have to go back! We can't just leave Alan in there!" Burke shouted as he shrugged out of Zeke's grip.

Eliana moved next to Josh, between Burke and the door. "Negative! He's not in there, Pete! And we don't know where they've taken him. We'd be fumbling blindly in the dark. Right now we need to fall back and make a plan."

Burke pressed his lips into a thin line as he looked around at the rest of the group. Gabe leaned against a well, his hands on his knees, while Jed checked him over. "What happened?" Burke asked him.

Gabe winced as he straightened and took a deep breath. "They came out of nowhere while Alan and I were examining the console. A swarm of men. Alan shoved me away. I... I ran—" he trailed off, his voice heavy with guilt.

"You did fine, Gabe. They would have gotten you, too," Eliana reassured him, then stepped closer to Burke. She wrapped a hand around the back of his neck to ground him. "We need to find a secure position to make a plan. We can't defend a hallway."

The immediacy of the safety of the others broke through his haze. His shoulders slumped. "All right, all right. Let's go."

As they cautiously withdrew down the hallway, Eliana said to Josh, "Talk to me, Josh. Why didn't your sensors pick up any life signs?"

"I don't know. There was nothing, I swear. But I can track Alan using the transmitter signal from his link. We can find him," he looked at Burke, "but we won't know how many of these guys will be with him."

“So, an enemy we can't track on our sensors, holding one of our people captive surrounded by an unknown number of hostiles." She paused, her eyebrows raised. "Outstanding."

They all fell into a troubled silence as the quick retreat demanded all their energy and attention.

******

Virdon woke slowly, suppressing a groan at the sharp pain lancing through his forehead. The surface beneath him was padded, but not enough to be comfortable, and he had a multitude of body aches making themselves known. His body armor was gone, as was his link bracelet. Keeping his eyes closed, he tried to assess whether he was alone, abandoned to sleep off the blow that had subdued him. After listening carefully and hearing nothing, he peeked from beneath hooded lids.

"He's awake," a voice said nearby. He opened his eyes fully and raised a hand to rub his temples. Sitting up, he leaned forward with his heads in his hands as the room spun and the pain in his head flared again.

A man wearing a uniform covered in a mottled pattern of varying shades of tan, gray, and blue stood on the other side of a clear barrier. His sleeve bore an insignia of three chevrons overlaid with a silver star—a senior airman. His black hair was cut in a traditional "high and tight" that Virdon was used to seeing on military enlisted men. The square set of his jaw and bland expression were unreadable.

He stared at Virdon. “Provide name, rank, serial number.”

Virdon resisted the impulse to blurt out the information, which had been drilled into him as his first and only response to interrogation. His foggy brain couldn't think of any good reason _not_ to give them the information. He was still trying to process that the base was still occupied by an active military force.

He swallowed past a dry throat and lifted his head gingerly. He blinked a few times to try to clear his thinking. His interrogator repeated, "Provide name, rank, serial number." There was no trace of annoyance or impatience in his voice.

"Why?" he managed to croak.

The man eyes scanned over Virdon's face, searching for something. "Information needed to assess status." Every word was clipped.

Virdon considered a moment, then sighed. "All right. Virdon, Alan J. Lieutenant Colonel, United States Air Force. Zero-zero-eight-five-one-seven-seven-nine-four-nine."

"Serial number format invalid." He said over his shoulder to the other soldier, "Guy says he's a light colonel, Sarge.”

“Yeah, be sure to salute the man, Mauser,” the Sergeant said from his position behind a console. Virdon couldn't see the insignia to guess what level non-commissioned officer. The Sergeant tapped a rapid sequence of buttons on a keyboard. “Accessing database of known personnel.”

Mauser returned his attention to Virdon. "You are out of uniform, _Colonel_."

Virdon smirked at the irony. "You have no idea, Airman."

The Sergeant whistled, long and low. "At ease, Mauser. This guy may be legit. But if he is, he has a lot of explaining to do." He walked around the console toward the cell. His brows knit together. "I have one record for a Lieutenant Colonel Alan Virdon. He was a NASA astronaut. Went MIA and declared dead," his icy blue eyes locked with Virdon's and narrowed slightly, "in 1980."

Virdon stood and approached the barrier, tilting his head to one side so he could see the man’s insignia. “Look, Tech Sergeant....”

“Hudson.”

“Sergeant Hudson. I think you should let me speak to your commanding officer.”

Hudson crossed his arms over his chest. “When my C.O. decides you are worth his time, he’ll be here,” he declared mysteriously. “Meanwhile, I need to figure out if you are the real deal or just a whacko.” He glanced at his companion. “What do you think, Mauser?”

“He’s telling the truth, Sarge.”

“You sure?”

“All physical indicators say he is. Which doesn’t rule out crazy, but I don’t think he’s that, either.”

Hudson nodded. “All right, Colonel. Tell me a story. If it’s the truth—and Mauser here is a crack lie-detector—we’ll see about letting you out of that cell.”

Virdon considered his options carefully. Hudson and Mauser seemed to be just what they were—soldiers in the USAF. The uniforms looked different from his time, not unexpected after a thousand years. They certainly acted the part as well. He was a little surprised that no officers were present for the questioning of what had to be a significant person of interest, but he had no idea how big the company occupying the base might be, other than the dozen or so men he saw briefly when he was taken.

Still, they had access to some very old and extensive database, if they were able to call up his service information so quickly and easily. He could feel the hope swelling in his chest—hope for a working human government, that some remnant of the United States had survived despite what the Alban’s historical records said. Maybe the entire country, or even the world, was not as primitive as what they’d seen so far.

He tried vainly to push that hope down.

That Mauser somehow had the ability to detect lies, on the other hand, didn’t really surprise him. Not after some of the innate abilities he’d seen among the residents of Alba. But he filed it away as an interesting fact.

“Could I have some water first?” he asked with an apologetic shrug.

Hudson turned to Mauser. “Get the Colonel a drink.”

Virdon watched Mauser go to the opposite wall and operate a panel that looked similar to the servitors in Alba. He glanced around the rest of the holding area. Off of the main room, two other empty cells took up the walls adjacent to his. The fourth wall contained a heavy door, currently closed. Other than the computer desk, the room contained no other furniture.

Mauser opened a drawer through the barrier and deposited a canteen inside, then pushed it through to Virdon’s side.

Once he’d drunk his fill, Virdon began, choosing his words judiciously. “My ship got caught in a temporal wormhole as it was nearing the Alpha Centauri system. It travelled to this time and crash landed back on Earth. The area where it crashed, somewhere in California at my best guess, is controlled by talking apes who have enslaved the primitive humans that remain. They’ve been hunting me ever since as an enemy of the state.”

Without taking his eyes off Virdon, Hudson asked, “Mauser?”

Mauser snorted. “All true, Sarge. Although I might want to revise that ‘not crazy’ assessment.” He paused. “But he’s holding something back.”

“No shit. Doesn’t take a psyops to figure that out.” He addressed Virdon again. “What about the others? Those humans aren't primitive.”

“We came here to explore; they don’t intent any hostility. They are helping me search for a way to get back to my time.” The thought came to him that his friends may have already engaged the base company in a rescue attempt. “Let me talk to them, let them know—“

“Who are they, Colonel? Where are they from?” Hudson interrupted, his face turning stony. “Was your mission a solo, or are there other astronauts from the past here as well?”

Virdon’s lips pressed into a tight line as he chafed under the continued interrogation. Something felt... off. Something in his gut made him hesitate to tell these soldiers everything about his friends. But he didn’t have a lot of leverage at the moment. “One of my crew died in the crash—Major Steve Jones. Major Pete Burke survived and is in the party out there.” He pointed toward the door. “We befriended a chimpanzee named Galen who has been travelling with us. The rest of them are from an underground city in the desert.”

Hudson was about to respond when the door to the main room swung outward. A group of four more soldiers entered. Hudson and Mauser both snapped to attention when the lead soldier entered.

Like the others, he was dressed in a camouflage battle uniform, but he wore a flat-topped black beret over his tawny crew cut. Virdon caught the insignia—Chief Master Sergeant, the highest non-commissioned officer rank.

“At ease.” The Chief nodded to the others, then approached the barrier until he was only inches away. Virdon could feel the air of command that the man exuded. “Thank you, Colonel Virdon, for your cooperation. We’ve had the rest of your group under surveillance, and you’ve confirmed what we already know about them.” He turned to Hudson. “Let the Colonel out, Hudson.”

“Yes, Chief,” Hudson barked, then touched a button on the console. The barrier slid to one side.

“Chief Master Sergeant Schwartz,” he snapped a salute once Virdon took a step forward. “Temporary C.O. of Kirtland Base, Sir.”

After a moment of confused hesitation, Virdon returned the salute. “You are in command here?”

“Yes, Sir. Since the death of our last ranking officer.”

Virdon’s heart began thumping a faster beat.

“As soon as we get you settled into more comfortable quarters, Colonel, we’ll initiate transfer of command to you.”

******

Virdon’s link bracelet was returned to him, and he immediately opened a channel to Burke as he followed Schwartz to a different section of the base. “Pete, come in.”

“Alan!” Burke’s excited voice came back. Virdon could hear the undercurrent of concern. “Are you all right? Where are you?”

“I’m fine, Pete. I’ve made friendly contact with the locals. Sit tight for the time being until I can arrange to meet you somewhere.”

Burke sputtered, “Wait. What—“

He knew Burke has as many questions as he did, but he didn’t have many answers yet himself. “I’ll contact you again in an hour, let you know where to meet. Just tell everyone to stay put until then.” He closed the channel.

The quarters they led him to were spacious, befitting the position of the base commander. The outer room was dominated by a large conference table, obviously meant for meetings with senior staff, but also had a smaller personal desk and two comfortable-looking armchairs. In the bedroom, Virdon wished for a quarter in his pocket, because he was sure if he dropped it on the covers of the bed, it would bounce. A neatly folded uniform in the same camouflage pattern as the others lay on the bed, along with a pair of charcoal gray boots on the floor. Silver oak clusters were already pinned to the collar. The final item on the bed caught Virdon’s attention, and he picked it up to examine. The device was a fairly flat rectangle, about four inches long and a couple of inches wide. The dark gray metallic surface had several inset buttons, and the opposite side, when he turned it over, was shiny with a strange texture.

“That’s your personal communications controller, Sir,” Schwartz informed him. He took it from Virdon. “You won’t be able to wear the other link, it will interfere with the function of the commcon. You can tune the this to the same frequency to talk to your friends.” He held out a hand to take the Alban bracelet and put it on a table when Virdon handed it over. “The commcon will form a molecular bond with your skin that will then be keyed to your DNA. No on will be able to remove it but you. But when it’s removed, the components will fuse, rendering it useless to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.”

“Where—“

“On the underside of your forearm.” He gestured toward Virdon’s right arm. “With your permission, Sir?”

When Virdon nodded, Schwartz took his right wrist and turned it over. He centered the device on his forearm and gently pressed it into his flesh. With a hiss of suction, the communicator molded itself to the slight curve of his forearm. The skin began to tingle, but not unpleasantly. A moment later, though, Virdon swayed as a wave of vertigo and nausea crashed over him. Schwartz locked an iron grip on his shoulder to steady him.

“Sorry, Colonel. Some people have difficulty adjusting to the neural connections.”

“Neural?” Virdon gasped. “You said it was a communicator.”

“Yes, Sir. Two-way communication with all the systems on the base. You’ll be able to access information from the central database on a visual overlay. Any discomfort will pass quickly.”

“Does everyone have one of these?” Virdon massaged his temple as his vision blurred then cleared.

“No, Sir.” Schwartz shook his head. “Only commissioned officers. Which right now, means you. Sir.”

As Virdon steadied, Schwartz released him and gestured toward the door. “Once you are changed, the senior staff will brief you. Then we’ll arrange for the rest of your party to come in.” He saluted, with an air of anticipation.

Virdon returned the salute, then realized what the Chief was waiting for. “Dismissed, Chief.” He rubbed absently at the arm now bearing the commcon as the door closed, leaving him alone.

It felt like a lifetime had passed since he’d worn military fatigues. He sat on the edge of the bed and ran his hand over the fabric of the uniform. Everything was happening too fast. He couldn’t... he couldn’t even begin to formulate all the questions he had.

How had these soldiers survived all this time? How many generations had been born, grown old, and died in this base since they were cut off from the rest of the world? Somewhere else in the base that he hadn’t seen yet, there must be families. And why were there no officers? How many people were now living in the base?

He yelped when text flashed before his eyes, scrolling across the bottom of his field of vision. _Current base complement: 101_.

 _So_ that’s _a visual overlay_ , he thought. Despite being startled, his head felt clearer; in fact, the aches and pains he’d felt when he first woke in the cell were gone. He felt _good_. Really good.

He donned the uniform, then turned his attention back to the device. The hour when he had promised to contact Burke was just about expired. _Let’s see what else it can do._

He picked up the link bracelet again and opened a channel to Burke. “Connect to this channel,” he said, then closed the link again. The commcon beeped. “Pete?”

“Alan!” Burke’s voice rang clearly. “What the hell is going on?”

“I’ve been talking to the soldiers occupying the base. Regular USAF, Pete! Things are moving at Mach two right now, but I’ll explain everything when I see you. Bring everyone to the control room where I saw you last, at twenty-hundred hours. That’ll give me a few hours to get things settled here.”

“Settled? Is everything really okay, Al?” His voice took on a sly edge. “Give the word, and we’ll intercept the ball and head for the end-zone.”

Virdon smiled. Burke’s football code. He wanted to know if they needed to rescue him. “No, Pete, everything really is fine. Better than fine. But you aren’t going to believe it until you see it. Virdon out.”

He returned the link bracelet to the table, no noticing the indentations in the metal where his fingers had gripped it. Then he went to meet his new command.

******

Burke exchanged a look with Eliana as he signed off from Virdon again. “So. Trap?” She asked with an arched eyebrow.

“I don’t think so. I gave him a chance to say he needed help. But I think just two of us should go until we know for sure.” He pointed at Zeke, who hovered nearby. “Me and Zeke.”

Zeke’s eyes popped open with surprise, but Eliana was already shaking her head. “No, I should go—“

Burke talked over her objections. “If it is a trap, they,” he gestured toward the others gathered around them, “are going to need you to lead them out of here, figure out what to do next. Besides, Zeke will be able to tell if Alan is acting under duress. And I have to go because he’s expecting me.”

“He’s expecting us all,” she emphasized with a finger jab to his chest.

“And if it’s on the up and up, we’ll all be there soon enough. Look, Eliana, he’s... if he’s in trouble... I have to go.” He turned to Zeke. “It’s your choice, pal, but I’d really like to have you with me.”

“Of course I’ll help,” Zeke replied.

Galen, who listened with increasing agitation, broke in. “Alan would never knowingly betray his friends, even if he were being threatened.”

Burke clasped the chimp’s shoulder to reassure him. “I don’t think he would, either, Galen. But something about his voice sounded... off. Better safe than sorry.”

A smile twitched on Galen’s lips. “Now _that_ saying, I understand.”

“All right,” Eliana said. She was back in command, making a new plan. “Pete and Zeke will go to the control room. The rest of us will wait nearby for the all clear.” She opened the small pack sitting on the floor next to her. “Meanwhile, rest up and chow down, people. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long evening.”

******

Burke and Zeke approached the hatch to the control room, which now stood open again. Light spilled from inside the room. They both carried their rifles slung on their shoulders, to appear less threatening. Pausing outside the door, Burke called, “Alan?”

“We’re here, Pete. Come on in.”

Burke stepped through the door first, followed closely by Zeke. The room now had enough light that Burke could see the layout clearly, as well as its dimensions. His eyes quickly scanned around the large screens one wall, the bank of computer controls on another, and the rows of desks, but were drawn to Virdon and the half dozen men standing behind him. Burke frowned.

Virdon wore a strange uniform, some sort of camouflage fatigues. What concerned Burke more, though, was the look in his eyes. They darted back and forth—a look he had seen too often on the rough streets of Jersey City as a kid. And even as Virdon stood at parade rest, Burke could sense the restless tension that thrummed through him. A feeling of unease settled coldly into his gut.

“Something’s not right,” Zeke whispered. “Almost like that’s not Alan.”

Burke nodded just as a big smile broke on Virdon’s face. The older man started forward, his arms flung open. “Pete! Look at this place! It’s still an operational base, has been all this time. They needed someone in command, and I’m the ranking officer now.”

The crease between Burke’s brows deepened. “Just like that? You show up and they just hand over the keys to the city?”

Virdon pulled up short, his expression darkening. “Yeah. Just like that. These silver clusters,” he tugged at the insignia on his collar, “aren’t just for decoration, you know.”

“This is nuts, Al—“

“Pete,” Zeke clutched Burke’s arm, his tone low and urgent, “I’m not getting anything from the others.” He was staring past Virdon at the half-dozen men behind him. “There is _nothing_ there.”

Burke did a double take from Zeke back to the soldiers. “What—“

One of the soldiers wearing a black beret called out, “Colonel!”

Everything erupted. Virdon grabbed Zeke, eliciting a cry of pain from him as he was pulled away from Burke. As Black Beret strode forward to join Virdon, Burke brought up his rifle and fired a single shot into the soldier’s chest.

A white fluid spurted from the wound, and after missing a step, the solder closed rapidly on Burke. He wrenched the rifle out of his hands and struck him on the side of the head with its butt. Burke crumpled to the floor.

Zeke tried to pull out of Virdon’s grip; his eyes when wide with surprise when he couldn’t budge his arm. Virdon snatched his other arm as Zeke tried to strike him and held him tight.

“Don’t make this any harder, Zeke,” Virdon implored in a flat voice before Zeke lost consciousness.


	8. Everybody Hurts

_When your day is long_   
_And the night, the night is yours alone_   
_When you're sure you've had enough_   
_Of this life, well hang on_

Schwartz snapped to attention as soon as he entered the conference room on Virdon's heels. “Colonel?” he asked when the other man slammed his fists into the table, leaving dents in the heavy wood.

Virdon tried to get his anger under control, squeezing his hands into tight balls before he whirled on the Chief. “What the hell happened back there, Chief?”

“Major Burke needed to be brought in, Sir."

“And I was bringing him in—” He began pacing in short turns; every muscle his body felt taut, like a wire waiting to snap.

"All due respect, Sir, no you weren't. He's been compromised. The abomination has too strong a sway on him."

"Abomination?"

"The winged creature. The _hybrid_ ," he spat the word.

Virdon shook his head. "But you're a _machine_ ," he threw back in the same tone, looking pointedly at where white fluid still oozed sluggishly from the bullet hole in his chest. "Or so I'm guessing. That round barely slowed you down!"

"Biomimetic synthetic, Sir. We were created in the image of Man, in the same perfect form. The hybrids believe that they have _improved_ on the human form, that they are superior. They were the ones who started the Last War, who created things that never should have been. And if they gain access to the Pile, who knows how much more damage they could do.”

"Synthetic?" Virdon repeated, his eyes growing wide. He stopped pacing. "We? How many of you? Why wasn't that part of the briefing earlier?"

Schwartz continued his straight ahead stare. "Standard base protocol, Sir. All enlisted personnel are synthetics, commissioned officers are organics. Our function is to preserve the lives of the organics. The hazards of the Pile don't affect us."

Virdon slowly sank down onto a chair as the full implication of the last few minutes hit him. Burke and Zeke had been taken elsewhere while Schwartz had escorted Virdon back to his quarters. Both his friends had been unconscious, possibly injured. And he was responsible. Why had he done those things? Everything was moving so fast, spinning out of control. He felt like he was grasping at phantom reins to try to pull everything back from a precipice.

"Colonel, our duty is to protect the Pile. Keep it safe for the restoration of the rightful government of the United States. That city is dangerous. They have the technology to create weapons.”

Virdon shook his head. “They may have the technology, but not the desire. They are peaceful; they’re more worried about what could be used against them.”

“Are you sure, Sir? Someone once said, ‘The best defense is a good offense.’ That’s how Cold Wars get started.” Schwartz finally broke attention and locked eyes with Virdon. “Are you willing to put _everything_ on the line based on your trust of their good intentions?”

“What are you suggesting, Chief?” Virdon frowned. He was pretty sure he already knew the answer. Something twisted in his gut. These were his friends. Pete Burke had followed him through hell and back, even when he believed Virdon’s quest was pointless. But lately, he’s sensed Burke pulling away from him, more interested in putting roots down in Alba. Maybe if push came to shove, Burke would choose to stick with Zeke and the others instead of Virdon. After all, he was the one who’d fired first on Schwartz in the control room.

“We need to interrogate them, Sir. I doubt Major Burke knows anything relevant, but the other one, the hybrid—”

“His parents run the government in Alba,” Virdon blurted. He felt that twist again, like he was a passenger inside his own head. “If anyone is going to know something about their plans, he will.”

Schwartz considered a moment, as he watched the play of emotions on Virdon’s face. “Thank you, Colonel. I understand how hard it must be to have Major Burke turn his back on his duty, on his CO.”

Virdon barked a harsh laugh. “Do you, Schwartz?” He surged to his feet, stood bare inches from the Chief. “Do you _have_ any emotions? You and all these other _synthetics_. Do you feel anything? Do you!”

“Yes, Sir!” Schwartz snapped back to attention. “I understand _duty_ , sir. I understand honor. I _feel_ dedication to my country and loyalty to my fellow airmen. I don’t need anything else.” He paused, but when Virdon didn’t respond, he added, “And neither should you, Colonel.”

The muscles in Virdon’s jaw clenched. “I want to see them. I want to talk to Burke.”

******

_I have the feeling sometimes that we’re strangers. There’s so much about you I don’t know._

"He keeps rejecting the neural connections." Voices drifted to him in the darkness.

“It worked on the Colonel.”

“This one has something in his blood.”

"He's tainted by his association with the abomination."

The words made no sense. He was floating, slowly circling a vortex that would eventually swallow him. Ape faces jumped out of the gloom, faces he recognized.

 _You talk as though you thought I was a fool, like I don't know as much as you!_ He struggled to breathe, the slowly poisoned air suffocating him.

 _I believe that people in love should tell each other everything_. The world was spinning and he wanted to get off the ride. He swam to the surface of the miasma enfolding him.

‘Alan!’ he thought frantically. Virdon had been taken prisoner.

No.

Virdon had betrayed him! Rage burned through the last of the fog swaddling his brain. He raised his fists to strike out, only to be held down by restraints. He thrashed, trying to shake off the last images from his nightmares. Back on the spinning table. Back in the collapsed subway station. Back in a cell, a prisoner. He groaned, frustrated at the bands across his chest, arms, and legs that held him tight.

“Pete? Pete!” A new voice reached him, pulling him toward the light.

“Virdon?” he growled, raising his head and blinking owlishly. He was sitting in a heavy metal chair. Two thick leather straps buckled over his chest and abdomen, another across both thighs. More straps held down each arm and leg. His stomach contracted, and he tasted bile in the back of his throat.

“No, Pete, it’s Zeke. I don’t know where Alan is,” his voice was strained and bitter.

“Zeke?” Burke felt his heart jump in his chest when he finally focused on the angel. “Shit! You all right?”

Instead of sitting in a chair like Burke, Zeke knelt on the floor about ten feet away. A length of chain wound around his torso and upper arms, then looped around the joints where his wings jutted from his back, before attaching to a hook suspended from the ceiling. The other end was locked to a ring set in the concrete floor. Zeke’s right forearm bent at an awkward angle. A purpling bruise bloomed on the side of his face. His expression was pinched with pain.

“I think my arm’s broken. Alan—” he trailed off, ducking his head in embarrassment.

“What did you sense in him, Zeke?”

Zeke shifted slightly in his bonds to relieve the strain on his wings. “Something is very wrong with him. His emotions were... dark. Racing. Full of animosity. And there’s something else, Pete.”

“What?”

“He’s strong. A lot stronger than he should be. He snapped my arm like a twig. My species is stronger than humans; I should have been able to pull out of his grasp. But I couldn’t budge.” His eyes darted around the room, his voice dropped to a husky whisper. “Do you think he’s been replaced by... by whatever those soldiers are?”

Burke scanned the room while he considered that; other than the two of them, it was empty, with just one hatch-like door. Was Virdon, the real Virdon, sitting in a room like this somewhere, maybe close by? Something didn’t add up. He shook his head. “I don’t think so. You said you couldn’t feel anything from the other soldiers in the control room. The one I shot bled white. They definitely aren’t human, but I’m not sure what they are. What you sensed in Virdon was at least recognizable as human.”

“Yeah,” Zeke confirmed.

“Somehow they messed with him. Maybe drugged him, I don’t know.” His own head was still pounding from the blow he’d taken, making it hard to think straight. Then a sudden thought made his blood run cold. “If they do the same thing to us, Eliana is suspicious enough at this point that they couldn’t fool her again. Hopefully she’s already high-tailed it out of here with the others.”

Zeke sagged against the chains, then with a hiss of pain struggled to push himself more upright. Burke could see the trembling of the angel's muscles.

"I'm sorry I got you into this mess, Zeke."

Before Zeke could respond, the clanging of metal signaled that the door was being opened. Burke and Zeke exchanged a quick look, then turned to face their captors. When Virdon came through the door, Burke tensed, clenching his fists.

“What the hell is going on, Alan?” he shouted.

Virdon stopped inside the door then turned to speak quietly to the two soldiers behind him. They nodded and stayed outside the room as Virdon slowly closed the door. He paused for a moment, his hand on the latch, before he turned around to face his friends.

“Pete—”

“Untie us, Alan!” Burke yanked against the restraints again, knowing it was futile, but needing to express his anger. “Zeke's hurt; he says you broke his fucking arm!”

“I can't do that yet.” Virdon held out his hands, placating. “Just hear me out.”

“Why?”

Virdon leaned over Burke, resting his hands on Burke’s shoulders. “Because we are sitting on top of a stockpile of weapon grade nuclear material.” He pointed toward the door. “And these men are here to protect it.”

“Men?” Burke’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Except they aren’t _men_! What the hell are they, Alan?”

He waved the question away. “Did you hear what I said, Pete?”

“Yeah. I heard. Now answer my damn question.” Burke couldn’t help but noticed the hot flush on Virdon’s skin, and the enormous dark pools of his wide-blown pupils.

Virdon looked like he wanted to strike Burke, but pushed himself away instead. “All right. They are synthetics—advanced robots, put here to protect this base. They may not be human, but they _are_ airmen, and the rightful keepers of this place. And right now, they believe _his_ people,” he pointed at Zeke, “might be looking to get their hands on the material stored here.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Zeke said.

“Is it, Zeke?” Virdon strode over and crouched in front of him. “Can you honestly tell me that Mal and Levi don’t have any hidden agenda in allowing your people to come here?”

Burke didn’t like the hint of a threat he heard in Virdon’s voice. He felt a sudden need to draw Virdon’s attention away from Zeke. “What did they do to you?” he demanded.

Virdon stood and turned back to Burke, broke into a smile. For a moment, he looked like the old Virdon. But then Burke noticed the hard glint where the smile didn’t reach his eyes, and it made his skin crawl. “It’s still me, Pete. They didn’t do anything to me except remind me of the duty to the oath I took. The same oath _you_ took. So why are you deserting your duty?” He crossed his arms over his chest, and the smile disappeared. “I think you’ve gone native, Major. I think you care more about him and the people in that city than you do about your own kind.”

“My own kind?” Burke repeated, incredulity elevating his voice. “What does that even mean?”

He and Virdon stared at each other for a few moments, then Virdon spun on his heel and re-opened the door. Schwartz and another airman entered when he beckoned.

“They’re all yours, Chief. Do what you need to do.”

******

Virdon stopped in the hallway after he closed the door on his friend and leaned back against the cold concrete wall. The hand he passed over his eyes trembled, and his vision wavered. Something didn’t feel right, like he was coming down with something. He wondered if the base still had any medical staff—

 _Medical facility staffed to care for organics._ The text scrolled across his vision.

“Where is the medical facility?” he asked out loud, unsure if he really needed to vocalize his requests for information.

A translucent map appeared, pointing him down the hallway to the right. He followed the instructions for the short walk. When he arrived, the door stood open.

“Colonel Virdon,” the soldier acknowledged as he quickly came to attention.

Virdon glanced at the insignia; his commcon supplied a name. “Sergeant Blake. At ease.” He hopped up onto an exam table. “I—,” he stopped with an embarrassed smile. “I haven’t been feeling quite right. Nauseous, dizzy. I guess I just want to make sure I’m not coming down with anything.”

“All right, Colonel. Why don’t you lie back, and I’ll run a scan?” While Virdon positioned himself on the exam table, Blake turned and retrieved a piece of equipment off a table. “The Chief explained to you that there could be some discomfort while you adjusted to the link created by the commcon, right?” He turned on the scanner and held it a few inches above Virdon’s head, slowly moving down toward his chest.

“He told me. But I thought that would pass once the connection was made. I’m still feeling... odd.”

Blake raised a brow. “Well, Sir, everything looks within expected parameters. I’ll draw some blood to make sure you haven’t picked up a pathogen.” He pressed the sensor to one of Virdon’s fingers then pushed a couple of buttons. “Well, nothing immediately detectable—no bacteria or viruses. But I’ll run a culture just to be sure. Come back in a couple of days for the results. Or come back sooner if you start to feel worse.”

Virdon took the proffered hand and pulled himself upright. “Thanks, Sergeant. I’m sure it’s nothing.” He stood up again, wavered a little until Blake steadied him. “This visual overlay can be disconcerting. Maybe I just need to give it a little more time to get used to it.”

“No problem, Colonel. I’m here if you need me.” He began putting away the instruments.

“Did Schwartz come in, get that wound taken care of?”

“Yes, Sir. Damage was minimal. He’ll be fine.”

Virdon nodded. “Good.”

Blake watched him leave, and when he was sure he was out of earshot, spoke out loud. “Chief Schwartz.” After a moment, he got a response. “The Colonel was just here, Chief.”

“What’s his status?”

“He was concerned he was getting sick. But I found no evidence of pathogens. Not that I expected to.”

“Is there a problem with his commcon?”

“No, Chief. He’s adapting as expected. Norepinephrine levels increased 145% above normal. Heart rate, oxygen exchange at peak efficiency. Neuroglobin and myoglobin production still ramping up. Within the next three days, his brain and muscles will be functioning far above their previous baseline.”

“Outstanding, Sergeant.”

“I asked him to come back in three days for a recheck, so I’ll be able to track his responses.”

“Very good. Keep me apprised.”

******

Burke swallowed hard as the two enlisted men rolled a cart of equipment into the room. He felt numb, his brain grappling with the fact that Virdon had just walked out on them—on him—and left him in the hands of his captors. Zeke slumped in his bonds, his eyes squeezed almost shut as he endured the pain of his injury.

“Hey!” Burke tried to catch the attention of the guy he had shot in the control room, “I don’t know what Virdon told you that he thinks we know, but he’s wrong. There is no secret agenda, no plot to steal whatever the hell you have hidden here.”

Schwartz went on quietly arranging the contents of the cart, not looking up or acknowledging Burke’s words. Burke was about to try again when Schwartz asked quietly, “Then why did you come here, Major?”

“To chase Virdon’s pipedream of going home,” he answered bitterly. “We were hoping for a ship, or at least information about where we could find one. Unless you happen to have a time machine laying around that we could borrow,” he finished with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

“That may be why _you_ came here, Major, but I am less confident of the motives of that _creature_ and his people.” Burke’s stomach dropped at the contempt and vitriol that Schwartz so casually directed at Zeke.

Zeke stirred slightly at that. “We didn’t know what was here. We wanted to make sure this place is not a threat to us.” He raised his head with an effort. “We only desire a peaceful coexistence with all our neighbors.”

“Peaceful?” Schwartz snorted. He strode over toward Zeke and crouched down in front of him, mirroring Virdon’s earlier pose. “Your kind has a strange definition of ‘peaceful’.”

“What do you want from me?” Zeke ground out. He jerked his chin toward the cart. “No matter what you do to me, it’s not going to change the truth.”

“Oh, we aren’t going to do anything to _you_ , hybrid.” As Schwartz’s words sunk in, Burke watched the blood drain from Zeke’s face. “But I can tell from your expression that you’d do _anything_ to protect your—”

Burke pushed away the fear that clawed at his throat. “Don’t tell them anything, Zeke.”

Schwartz grabbed the wrist of Zeke’s injured arm, and just gave a slight squeeze. Zeke screamed. “Leave him alone!” Burke shouted, throwing himself against his restraints.

He released the nearly-unconscious angel and pushed himself smoothly to his feet. He turned toward Burke with a sly look. “And I see the feelings run both ways. As I suspected.”

“I want to talk to Virdon.” His friend would never allow the things that Schwartz was threatening. Virdon would protect him. Yeah, maybe he was pissed at him for not wanting to join his merry little band, but would he really just let these robots hurt them?

Schwartz leaned in closer, his voice sinking to a conspiratorial whisper. “The Colonel knows everything that is going on here. We wouldn’t do anything without his orders.”

Burke flinched as if he’d been struck, the words dropping like a heavy shroud over his heart. Virdon’s last statement replayed in his head. _Do what you need to do. They are all yours._

“Go to hell,” Burke growled. “You and Virdon and the rest of you can all go to hell.”

Schwartz took a capsule from the cart and handed it to his colleague. “Mauser, wake up the abomination.”

“Yes, Chief.” Mauser waved the capsule under Zeke’s nose, rousing him to full consciousness as he choked and gasped against the noxious fumes.

Burke watched Schwartz pick up a pair of cuffs with long wires trailing back to a machine. He fastened them around each of Burke’s wrists, then turned his gaze on Zeke. “What is the real reason for coming here? How much do you know about the material stored here?”

“I don’t know anything!” Zeke shouted, his voice hitching with a sob.

“Well, that’s too bad. Maybe you better think harder.” Schwartz flipped a switch on the machine, and Burke jerked in his seat. The muscles in his neck and arms corded with tension as the electricity coursed through him. His head snapped back against the headrest. The scream that ripped from his throat was unholy, an animalistic howl that pierced Zeke’s heart. Tears formed in Zeke’s eyes as he tried desperately to think of something, anything that he could say that would stop Burke’s torment.

After a time that seemed to stretch for an eternity, Schwartz turned the switch off. Burke slumped forward, his breathing labored and harsh. He coughed twice as he drew in a ragged breath. “Fuck you,” he gasped.

“All due respect, Chief,” Mauser spoke quietly to Schwartz as he continued to focus Zeke’s face, “but I think he’s telling the truth.”

“I’m not convinced,” Schwartz countered, “that your abilities will work the same way on the hybrids, Airman. We don’t know all the alterations that were made to their physiology.”

“Yes, Sir,” Mauser answered.

“Where is the rest of your group hiding, Major?” Schwartz asked.

“Long gone out of here.“

“I see.” Schwartz looked at Zeke. “Where are your people, hybrid?”

Zeke raised his chin defiantly, knowing that if Mauser had the ability to tell truth from lies, that the best answer was silence. His face crumbled a moment later when Schwartz shocked Burke again. His screams mingled with Burke’s, echoing off the walls until they became unbearable.


	9. Reach Out Of The Darkness

_I knew a man that I did not care for_   
_And then one day this man gave me a call_   
_We sat and talked about things on our mind_   
_And now this man he is a friend of mine_

“How much longer are we going to wait?” Galen asked for the third time in ten minutes. He paced back and forth in front of Eliana as she leaned against a desk and checked over her rifle. Again. He was beginning to fear that she would listen to Burke’s last piece of advice—that she should lead the group out of the base if he and Zeke were captured.

“We are going to give Josh and Gabe time to finish the modifications to the sensors." She nodded toward where the two men huddled around another desk, one of the sensors flayed open like a specimen for dissection.

"And what are these modifications going to do for us?" Galen asked impatiently, rolling his eyes.

"They are going to let us track the hostiles."

Galen sighed. Why were military people always so _literal_? To them, the objective was the only thing that mattered; how that objective was achieved was largely irrelevant.

"It's simple, Galen," Josh took pity on him and explained. "They don't give off the usual life signs that we were trying to detect before. But from the scans that Pete and Zeke took before they went into the control room, we know that they give off a low levels of an unusual type of radiation. We're recalibrating to pick that up."

"You understand the significance of those readings, Eliana?" Gabe asked as he made an adjustment with a tiny instrument.

"Yeah," she replied in a weary tone, finally setting down her rifle.

"Would someone like to tell _me_ what they mean?" Galen asked, shuffling over to Gabe and Josh. He peered over their shoulders at the machinery. The wires and circuits were a perplexing maze, spelling out a message that only the others could understand.

"They aren't human." Josh straightened and stretched his back. "Some sort of robot, maybe even a cyborg with some human components. But this kind of radiation signature could only be produced by a machine with a nuclear power supply."

Galen brows shot up. "Now, how could they be _machines_? Machines that look like men?" he scoffed. "That... that sounds like something Pete would make up to tease me."

"Human-like robots were common by the end of the twenty-third century, Galen. Androids, cyborgs, synthetics, they went by many names over the years. Military drones were rarely this well camouflaged, unless they were infiltration units. I don’t know what they are doing here as base personnel.”

Eliana folded her arms over her chest, her face grim. “So how do we disable them?”

Josh turned toward her. “What do we have for ordinance?”

“Needler rifles. Four mags of explosive rounds.” She cocked her head to one side. “Will those frag the sons of bitches?” Her tone was bitter.

Josh raised an eyebrow at her sudden vehemence. “I can't say for sure, but if not, we are very, very screwed.”

“Are we seriously talking about trying an all out assault on these things?” Jed asked.

Eliana’s expression darkened further. “They aren’t going to just let us walk in there and take our people back. We need to know that we can kill them!” She slammed a fist onto the table.

“So we are going to get our friends?” Galen asked, relieved.

“Yeah, Galen. We don’t leave our people behind.”

Jed bristled. “I’m not suggesting we leave anyone behind. They are my friends, too,” he said with a little heat. “But we are what, now nine people against a much larger force. We have no idea of their numbers or their weaponry—”

“We should be able to get an idea of the numbers we are up against.” Gabe finished closing up the modified sensor and powered it on. He touched a couple of buttons. “It’ll take a few minutes for it to do a complete scan of the area. Jed’s right, though. We are making a lot of blind guesses. I’d like to see if we can get into their computer mainframe; that would give us vital information about what is going on here.”

“Can you do that? What would you need?” Eliana asked.

Galen looked back and forth between the two Albans, as Eliana pushed herself away from the table to release some nervous energy.

“If we could get into the control room, I could go in directly from one of those consoles Alan and I were looking at. But,” he forestalled Eliana’s objection, “since that’s not an option, I can try to use that network access port.” He pointed toward a small box on the wall.

“What’s the downside?” she asked. “There has to be a downside or you would have done it already.”

“Security,” Gabe answered curtly. “Tapping into the network will surely give away our position. I _might_ be able to reroute the signal to give us some time before they figure out where we are, but there’s a chance it won’t work. We all need to agree to take this risk.”

"Well, I think it's worth the risk. Is there anyone else who doesn't?" Galen asked, looking around the room at the rest of the group. Their faces were set in grim determination, but every person shook their head.

"All right," Eliana took up her rifle and headed for the door, "Kezia and Nethaniah will keep watch in case we get visitors." She paused to squeeze Gabe's shoulder. "Be careful."

******

Burke felt like every nerve in his body was on fire, every muscle trembled with overstimulated exhaustion. Even after the electricity was turned off, the pain continued to burn across his senses. His skin was being flayed off a layer at a time, his bones splintered and cracked, his brain liquifying in his skull—at least that's what his body told him was happening. But when he finally pried open his eyes again, there was no blood, barely even a bruise. He panted against the pain as he tried to think, to figure a way out of this situation.

He must have moaned out loud. “Pete?” Zeke whispered in a weak voice.

With an effort, Burke focused on the angel; Zeke looked as bad as Pete felt. Feathers littered the floor around him, some of them tipped with blood, and a few were entangled in the chains that bound him. Wet tracks trailed down his face.

“M'okay,” Burke muttered unconvincingly. “You didn't tell them anything, did you?” He flexed his hands, testing again the straps that held him into the chair.

Zeke ducked his head. “If I'd actually known anything, I might have,” he said, his voice wrecked from his own screams of rage and denial. “Why are they doing this? Why is Alan _letting_ them do this?” He shook his head, not expecting any answers.

“It's like you said. It's not Alan,” Burke said. “I know Virdon better than I know myself. He'd never say those things, never turn his back on us like he did. It's not him.” He wasn't sure who he was trying to convince, Zeke or himself.

Before Zeke could answer again, the door opened. Schwartz and Mauser entered, followed by Virdon. He stopped directly in front of Burke.

“My men tell me you won't cooperate.”

“Jesus, Alan, do you even hear yourself? 'Your men'?” He made a contemptuous sound. “'Your men' have been having a field day torturing us, so damn right I won't fucking cooperate.”

Virdon's face flushed, his nostils flaring and his eyes bulging. Burke swallowed nervously. He'd never seen Virdon so pissed, so on the edge of true rage. But the Colonel's expression just as quickly shuttered over. “You're right. I shouldn't have sent my men to do something I should be doing myself.” He reached down and grabbed the index finger on Burke's left hand. Burke's eyes widened as Virdon started pulling the digit backward.

“Zeke!” Virdon shouted over his shoulder. “I watched him die once. Do you think you can do the same?”

Burke heard Zeke's hoarse protests, but when he locked eyes with Virdon, he saw no compassion, no remorse in the older man's eyes. No sign of the friendship for which they had each risked their lives. “You son of a bitch—,” he began.

Then the room erupted into chaos.

******

Gabe pointed toward a doorway a few yards away. “Down there. Three human life signs, plus two of the soldiers.”

Eliana smiled tightly, one eyebrow arching upward. “I think your masking virus did the trick, Gabe.”

“Yeah, but that only fools the surveillance cameras. Once one of them has eyes on us, we won't be hidden anymore.”

She nodded, then turned to give quiet orders to the rest. “All right, we've got two hostiles and the status of Virdon is unknown. Head shots with explosive rounds to take out the soldiers. Everyone ready?”

When everyone nodded assent, she raised her rifle to her shoulder and quick-stepped down the hall, sweeping back and forth with the weapon as she went. She flattened herself against the wall next to the door, followed quickly by Matthias and Kezia. Nethaniah waited a short distance away with the non-combatants. She’d considered leaving them in a more secure location but was loathe to split up the group any more than it already was. Once they got Burke, Virdon, and Zeke, they would likely be in a fighting retreat with no time to rendezvous with the others. Besides, she didn’t know when she might need the expertise of Josh, Gabe, or Jed to accomplish this crazy rescue.

She pointed two fingers at her eyes then at her gun. _Check your targets before you fire_. With their own people in the room, she didn’t want them injured by friendly fire. She punched the button to open the door. As she rushed through the narrow space to make room for the others, she fired at the head of the soldier in the black beret. He’d already pulled his sidearm out of its holster, but he crumpled against the wall without getting off a shot. She heard two more sharp reports and turned to see the other soldier on the floor, his face a ruined mess of white fluid and glowing components.

In the middle of the room, Virdon fisted both hands around the grip of his gun, his expression wide-eyed and confused. He jerked the weapon from one potential target to another, as if trying to decide if he would fire on any of his friends. He backed away from the door until he hit the other wall, but the pistol remained pointed at the floor.

Eliana rapidly assessed the scene—Burke and Zeke’s bindings, their injuries, the absence of other robots. She found herself wanting to rush to Burke’s side, to reassure herself that he was unharmed, to set him free from his bonds. But Virdon was still an unknown, a potential time bomb that she needed to diffuse. Although she lowered her weapon from her shoulder, her finger remained on the trigger.

“Alan, are you injured?” She didn’t see any obvious wounds on Virdon, but he was acting as if he were in shock.

“They did something to him!” Burke called. “He’s on their side now.” Kezia was undoing the straps binding him while Matthias worked to free Zeke from the chains.

Eliana frowned. She needed to get Virdon disarmed before she let Jed come in to treat him. She held out her other, empty hand to try to draw his attention away from her rifle. “Alan, look at me. We want to help you, but you’ve got to give me that gun.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Burke lever himself out of the chair. Kezia caught him when his legs buckled, but he pushed himself away from her toward Virdon. He stumbled into Eliana, and she wrapped her free hand around his waist to buoy him up as he leaned heavily on her. She could feel his muscles quivering with the effort of staying upright, could see the dark, sunken skin under his eyes and along his cheekbones. Other than a couple of cuts on his face, she didn’t see any other wounds. Yet he was obviously struggling against some hidden injury.

When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly strong and filled with emotion. “Alan, I don’t know what they did to you, but come back to us.”

Virdon stopped the furtive darting of his attention around the room. His pupils were blown wide, the darkness leaving only a narrow sliver of color. “I can’t Pete. If I stay with you, with them,” he waved the gun around, making Eliana’s heart jump, “it’ll end in disaster. This is my duty, to help protect this place.” His expression transformed from confusion to a hard, flinty glare. “You.” He raised the gun again, pointing it at Burke’s chest. “You shouldn’t be with these creatures, Pete. They’ll corrupt you, make you forget your mission.”

Burke slid a foot forward, despite Eliana tugging at him to stay where he was. “Al, these aren’t ‘creatures’. These are our friends. They saved my life. They saved all of us when Urko wanted to kill us. C’mon Al, I know somewhere in there, you remember all that. You _know_ Zeke and Eliana. You _know_ they are our friends. Come back with us. Come home to Alba.” He shuffled another foot toward Virdon, and Eliana mustered all her willpower not to pull him back as he wavered unsteadily.

Virdon’s jaw muscles twitched but the barrel of his pistol held steady. “I can’t, Pete. I’m toxic, for God's sake. Don’t you remember what Grul said? I’ll bring despair and death. If that’s my destiny, I’d rather do it here than back there. I have to give up. I have to...” He glanced around at the metal walls, a sob hitching in his chest. “At least this place already feels like a tomb. You should go back, make yourself a new life while you can.”

Burke took a final step so that Virdon’s gun was pressing lightly into his chest. “You really want to do this, Al?” Burke asked, his voice rising. “Maybe you are willing to give up on the friendship that's kept us both alive for the last year and a half, but I'm not. I don't give a crap about any prophecy. This,” he flattened his hand on Virdon's chest and could feel the bounding heart beneath it, the way it heaved as Virdon gulped air, “is all I care about. This connection between me and you. Because much as I love the life I could have in Alba,” he said with an apologetic glance at Zeke and Eliana, “I'd still walk into the desert with you tomorrow if you said we needed to go to Houston. C'mon, pal. I know you're in there somewhere. Fight it. Fight whatever they've done to you.”

They stared at each other. Then Virdon’s face crumbled, his shoulders slumped.

“I don’t know how, Pete. I don’t know how to stop feeling this way. How to come back from looking into the abyss?”

Burke pointed at the machine adhered to Virdon’s forearm. “Take that thing off, for starters. Disconnect yourself from whatever network you are sharing with these machines.”

With sudden decisiveness, Virdon relaxed his grip on the pistol, reversing it to surrender it to Burke, who tucked it in the back of his waistband. Now that Virdon was no longer a threat, Eliana signaled to Kezia that the area was safe for the others to join them. Jed, in particular, was badly needed to deal with Burke and Zeke’s injuries. She glanced back to see a determined look on Virdon’s face. How had she missed the taut, hectic flush of his skin, the jittery tension in every line of his body?

Virdon reached down and yanked on the commcon unit. It came away from the tender, underside skin of his forearm with a sticky, wet sound. Virdon’s grimace of distaste quickly turned to one of pain, a growl low in his throat building as he tore it free. The rectangular patch of skin beneath it was red and raw looking. He dropped it to the floor as it emitted a series of popping noises, and the smell of burning electrical components permeated the air.

Eliana turned to see Jed and Josh leading the remaining group into the room; they immediately rushed to where Zeke still slumped on the floor, hugging his injured arm close. “Matthias, Netheniah, keep an eye on the hallway. We could be getting more company if we don’t get out of here soon,” she ordered.

Virdon flashed Burke a wane half-smile as the younger man squeezed Virdon’s shoulder. “Welcome back, Al. Everything’s going to be okay.”

But the blood suddenly drained from Virdon’s face, and his eyes rolled upward. Burke tried to catch him as he started to fall, but in his own weakened condition, the two of them ended up in a tangle as they slid down the wall to the floor. Jed pushed past Eliana before she could move and ran a sensor over Virdon.

“He’s in some kind of shock. His entire system is going crazy,” the healer said aloud. He flicked open his kit and pulled out a microinjector. After attaching a vial, he pressed it to Virdon’s neck. “This should stabilize him long enough to get him out of here. But he’s going to need treatment back in Alba, the sooner the better.” He turned the sensor on Burke next. “And you aren’t much better.”

“I’ll be fine, just help us up.” Beside him, Virdon stirred with a moan, his eyes popping open with sudden alertness.

Jed pressed his lips into a thin line. “No, you aren’t. Whatever they did to you, it overloaded the nanites in your system.” His look of concern deepened as he laid a hand on Burke’s chest, his eyes hooded with distant focus. “They're all destroyed.” The nanites that Jed had injected into Burke after his life-threatening injuries three months ago had continued to work inside his body, repairing damage both old and new. Without them, he would heal much more slowly.

“Look, just give me a perk-me-up like you did Alan, so we can get the hell out of here. How’s Zeke?”

“Other than the broken arm, minor cuts and bruises. He’ll heal faster than you will.”

Eliana leaned in. “Are they ready to move, Jed? We really do need to get out of here as soon as we can.”

He finished injecting a cocktail of medications into Burke then snapped his kit closed. With Eliana’s help, he got both men onto their feet.

Galen padded over to his friends. “I’m glad to have you both back,” he said, his voice choked with emotion.

“Thanks, Galen.” Burke bumped the chimp’s arm with the back of his hand. Virdon nodded, all this strength and attention on moving. As he passed, Galen shouldered one of his arms, lending his strength to keep him going.

“Especially you,” Galen added quietly to Virdon. “I don’t know how I’d put up with Burke’s jokes without you around.”

Burke went to Zeke, a quick hand on the angel’s head to show his concern, then they were all filing out the door into the hall.

******

They'd made two turns through the maze of corridors before the Kirtland soldiers caught up with them. There was no warning, no standoff; they turned a corner and the group of four solders were on top of them before they could backpedal. It was as if they'd stepped out of the walls themselves.

Virdon was flattened against the wall by Galen to get him out of the way. Eliana stepped inside the reach of the first soldier who pointed a sidearm at her and jammed her rifle under his chin. When she pulled the trigger, the top of his head exploded and the rest of the body dropped to the floor with a heavy thud. Virdon heard the quick, popping reports of other needler rifles, punctuating the louder shots fired by the more primitive firearms the soldiers carried. Matthias stood over the body of another soldier, a stream of blood dripping off his fingers from a grazing wound gouged out of his forearm. Josh struggled with a third and was thrown against a wall, the soldier's gun coming up to bear on him. But before the robot could fire, Misha stepped in behind him and put his massive, hairy hands on either side of the android's head. With a squeeze and a heaving jerk, he twisted the head. The ragged synthetic flesh tore away, gushing white fluid as, with a roar, he pulled the head completely away from the body, trailing wires and metal components beneath it.

Gabe and Kezia grappled with the final soldier. The android held onto Kezia's rifle and they found for control of it. Gabe's arms wrapped around their opponent's torso, trying to knock him off balance. He closed his eyes in concentration.

Suddenly, the final soldiers topped moving, his hands dropping from the rifle as he dropped into a limp heap. Gabe and Kezia stepped back in surprise. There was not a mark on the android.

“Eliana! Zeke!” Josh screamed, his voice panicked. He knelt next to Jed. The angel slumped against the wall, his wings tucked in tight beneath him. “No, no, no!” Josh keened, tears streaming down his face.

Jed's eyes were open but unseeing, a red hole gaping in his forehead just above his left eye. His mouth was wide with surprise. A mat of bloody material stuck to the wall above him.

Zeke stumbled and sprawled on the other side, plucking at Jed's armor. He cupped his hands around the ginger head, shaking him slightly. “Jed? Jed, wake up! We have to go!” Burke knelt behind Zeke, one arm wrapped around Zeke's shoulders to keep him from collapsing completely. “No! No, he'll be all right. Someone get the med kit. Someone do something!”

“He's gone, Zeke,” Burke murmured in his ear. Burke had seen enough death at the hands of apes to recognize it. “I'm sorry. He's gone.”


	10. As Long As You’re There

_All my life I've waited for the right_  
_Moment to let you know I don't wanna let you go_  
_But now I've realized there's just no perfect time_  
_To confess how I feel, this much I know is real_

"Gabe, what did you do?" Eliana asked. She knelt next to the collapsed soldier that Gabe and Kezia had been wrestling with. She glanced over at the group still gathered around Jed's body. There was nothing she could do for them; she had to focus on her mission of getting the rest of them out of the base alive, to hold her own grief and guilt at bay. Soon enough, she'd have to rouse them and urge them to move on.

Gabe also crouched down by the android's head and laid his hand on it again. "I found a way to turn them off."

"Them?" Her voice rose with incredulity. "How many of 'them' are we talking about? All of them?"

"Yeah. I think I could turn them all off." Despite the magnitude of his revelation, he sounded defeated. "I just wish... I wish I'd found it sooner."

Eliana glanced over at her grieving friends. Wild hope warred with despair in her gut. "You may have just saved the rest of us, Gabe. What do we need to make this happen?"

"Access to one of their terminals. They have a switch deep inside their central processors. I was only able to access it when I touched this one, but I think I could insert a worm into their system that would flip the switch in all of them."

“Like the masking virus?”

“Yeah, exactly like it.”

Her mind started churning out plans and scenarios. She chewed on her bottom lip as she considered them in turn. "Once you were at the terminal, how long would you need? How long would it take for them all to go dark?" The question on her mind was this: how long would they be vulnerable to another attack?

“Well, now that I know how to tap into one of the remote access boxes, I can get in quick. Implanting the master switch command will take a few minutes. Then it should disseminate to the individual units as soon as they access the central processor.”

“Gabe—,” she tried to keep the impatient whine out of her voice and failed.

“Ten minutes, tops, from the time I get into the system.”

She frowned. Ten minutes was an eternity in a hostile combat situation. In less than ten minutes, they’d gone from daring rescue to deadly encounter. She struggled to think clearly, to make a decision, afraid that any path would lead to more of her friends dying. But if she didn’t get them moving soon, they would all die when the next attack came. She pushed herself to her feet, forced herself to make a decision—any decision—that would get them out of this damned corridor.

“All right. We’ll retreat back to the supply room where you tapped into their computer network before. We know that area and it’s defensible. Get the others ready. I’ll talk to Zeke and Josh.”

Gabe stepped over to where Kezia was dressing Matthias’s wound and spoke softly. She packed up the medical kit and they began to ready themselves. The angel moved on to the others sitting or standing nearby in stunned silence.

As Eliana approached where Jed had fallen, Burke stood and caught her arm. “Eliana—“

She turned to him, her face a mask of anger and pain. “We have to go, Pete. I know they’re in no shape, but we _have_ to keep moving or we are going to get ambushed again.” The words came out harsher than she’d intended, but she couldn’t help lashing out.

Wincing, Burke leaned in closer. “I was just going to ask if you were okay.”

“I’m not injured,” was her tight reply. She shrugged off his hand and knelt next to Zeke. She kept her eyes down, or on Zeke or Josh, anywhere but the face of her friend and charge who had died under her command. The wall that held back her grief was tissue-paper thin; seeing Jed close up would shred it completely. She began to imagine briefly how she would answer to the Council of Elders, look Jed’s father in the eye, stand under the disapproving gazes of Levi and Malachi…. But she pushed the image back down. What would she be feeling now if that stray bullet has struck another member of the group that had been huddled around Jed? If it had been Zeke? Or… or Burke? Not now. Not now. Later, she’d have the luxury of unpacking the ache in her chest when she imagined Burke being shot. She took a deep breath, tried to swallow past the constriction in her own throat. “I’m sorry, Zeke, but we have to move from this place. Gabe has a plan, but we need go back to a more secure area.”

“What?” Zeke’s head swiveled toward her. The sight of his streaked face and red-rimmed eyes almost undid her. “What? But… but Jed… we can’t….”

“We’ll take him with us,” she answered, voice quavering. “But we have to go.”

A shadow fell over them. “I’ll carry him,” Misha’s gruff voice offered in a surprisingly tender tone.

Zeke looked over his shoulder and up at the gorilla, then nodded. He reached out for Josh. His movements were slow, like he swam through a thick fog. “Josh, c’mon.” He tugged on his brother’s arm. “We’re moving now.”

“Jed?” Josh whispered.

“I will bear him gently, my friends,” Misha reassured as he stepped in and helped the distraught brothers to their feet. Then he bent down and slipped his arms beneath Jed’s folded wings, lifting and cradling him against his chest.

Satisfied that they were finally up, Eliana turned to look for Burke. He was huddled against the far wall, talking in low tones to Virdon. Galen stood next to the blond man with a white-knuckled grip on his arm, whether to support him or keep him from fleeing, she wasn’t sure. When she approached, Virdon looked up at Burke, and she could see his eyes were red and sunken, his lips twitching as he muttered something. Burke squeezed Virdon’s shoulder and shook his head, a curt denial.

“Not gonna happen, Al,” Burke insisted, his voice full of determination and finality.

“Alan, Galen,” she interrupted, “are you able to keep going?”

Galen stammered, “Yes… yes, I… I think so,” as he looked to Virdon for confirmation.

Virdon cleared his throat before he could croak an answer. “Yeah. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

******

They moved through the complex as a strung out line with Kezia, Matthias, and Nethaniah ranging ahead and behind to cover them. Eliana led the main group, frequently glancing back over her shoulder as if she expected more soldiers to pour out of the cross-corridors they passed at any moment. Behind her, Misha carried Jed's body. Burke watched Josh, his shoulders rounded and shaking, trail along after Misha, Beside Burke, Zeke leaned on him for more than physical support. Behind him, Virdon stumbled along despite Galen's supporting shoulder. They were in no shape, physically or emotionally, for another encounter.

He wanted to find a dark corner in a room, slide down to the floor, and let his grief and anger flow freely and overwhelm him. The rest of the world was a nightmare frozen in time, where nothing breathed or thought or felt or moved except the slow crawl through this death trap toward what they all hoped would be safety. If they got out of this—

He knew that Josh and Jed had been dancing around each other for years, both afraid to take that the leap into the unknown, the same commitment he’d avoided for years. In his old life, he’d had all the excuses he’d ever needed—the military, NASA, the mission planned to take him away from Earth for seven months. That had been a year and a half ago. Then they’d been on the run, fugitives fleeing for their lives, under constant pursuit by Urko. The excuses seemed endless. Except now that had run out.

Urko was gone. The threat of the Ape government was gone. Alba represented civilization, a place where he and Alan could settle down and try to salvage the wreck of their lives. Still, they had both resisted and larked off again on a crazy search for some shred of the past. And this time, someone else had paid the price for their adventure.

Thinking back on Grul’s prophecy, and the argument he and Alan had over which of them was the _Ashima_ , he became convinced that it really meant both of them. He and Virdon were hopelessly entwined by their fates. They were willing to risk their lives for each other, and maybe _that_ was both their biggest weakness and their greatest strength.

Maybe if they were both willing to surrender to the siren song of Alba, that would be enough. No more death. No more sacrifice.

Burke felt Zeke sway again as another wave of emotion sapped his strength. Zeke had held him back when Virdon had been captured, prevented him from rushing headlong into danger; now it was his turn to keep Zeke going. He knew that Zeke and Jed shared a bond beyond friendship, beyond lovers, beyond the closeness he and Alan had. Jed and Zeke had been _ahuvi_ , an old word that literally translated meant “beloved”. But like other terms unique to Alba, it had come to mean something more—something akin to “the other half of my soul”. Burke had once thrown Zeke’s use of it for Jed at him in anger, not understanding that it didn’t necessarily carry a romantic attachment. Zeke had insisted that Burke and Virdon where also _ahuvi_ , and despite Burke’s protests at the time, maybe Zeke was right. Thinking he had lost Virdon to the soldiers had been devastating. Then even knowing it was a trap, he’d rushed into danger in a desperate rescue attempt. After the ambush, Virdon had pleaded for Burke to leave him in the base, that he would find a way to keep the soldiers off the rest of them until they could escape without any more casualties. And despite what Virdon had done to him only hours before, Burke still vehemently refused to even consider it.

Ahead, Eliana raised a closed fist, signaling the group to halt next to an open doorway. Matthias came out of the storage room and nodded to Eliana, who waved the rest of the group inside. As Burke and Zeke hobbled past her, she cast a miserable, furtive glance in Burke’s direction. He couldn’t read her in that moment to tell what it meant.

When everyone was inside, she closed the door; Gabe was already at the door control panel tinkering to override it so only they could open it.

“All right, Gabe,” Eliana said when he was done, “work your magic.”

Burke eased Zeke onto a pile of containers, then sat down next to him. He cast a glance around the room. Virdon and Galen huddled together as the ape fussed over the suffering man. Misha gently eased Jed’s body onto a desk and arranged his limbs and wings with a touching reverence. Josh stood over the body in a fugue, stroking the back of one still hand over and over.

Kezia approached them, Jed’s medical kit in one hand and a backpack in the other. “When’s the last time either of you had something to eat?” At Burke’s noncommittal shrug, she pulled two wrapped bars out of the pack and pressed one into each of their hands. “Eat. And make sure to drink, too.”

She retrieved the sensor from the medical kit. “I have some minor training as a healer,” she explained, apologetic as she ran the instrument over both of them. “You’re both in rough shape, but I don’t want to put any more drugs in your systems right now.”

“Can you give something to Josh?” Zeke asked suddenly, breaking his silence. “To ease the… the pain.”

Kezia looked sympathetic but shook her head. “There’s no drug that can cure grief, Zeke,” she said gently. “Even if I could give him something right now to… to zonk him out, it would all still be waiting for him afterward.” She reached out and squeezed Zeke’s uninjured arm. “I’m sorry. I wish I had an injection to give us all that would help, but I don’t.” She pointed to the food bars in their hands. “Eat those. It’ll help the exhaustion.”

She moved on to Virdon and Galen, completing the same ritual of pressing food into their hands, then doing a quick assessment of Virdon’s deteriorating condition.

Burke took a bite from the food bar then suddenly found himself ravenous. He resisted the impulse to shove the entire thing in his mouth, worried that his stomach would still rebel. When he swallowed the first bite, he turned to Zeke, who still hadn’t moved, just sat staring at the tableau of his brother standing over the body of his best friend.

“Zeke,” he called gently, trying to draw Zeke’s attention back to his own needs. “You need to eat.”

“So much pain,” Zeke whispered, the hoarse words filled with anguish. Zeke dropped the food bar unnoticed and pressed his hand to his forehead. “Everyone’s pain; it’s too much. I can’t… I can’t…,” he broke off with a sob.

Burke winced at the sudden realization that Zeke was dealing not only with his own pain and grief, but he was empathically picking up the physical and emotional distress of everyone else around him. Including Burke. His body still burned from the neurogenic shocks; his muscles were throbbing knots of agony. Despite the stimulants still coursing through his blood, his brain felt muddled, and his eyes stung so much that he had trouble focusing. He squinted and blinked to try to clear his vision.

“Hey,” he said, wrapping an arm around Zeke’s shoulders. With the other hand, he cupped Zeke’s chin to turn his face toward him. “I don’t know if it will help, but try to focus on me.” He swallowed hard and pushed the ache and exhaustion down, allowed the feelings he had for Zeke to come to the fore. “Focus on this. I’m not leaving you. For better or worse,” he paused, choosing his next words very deliberately, “ _ahuvi_ , you are stuck with me. We’re going to go back to Alba, I’m going to get a nice nine-to-five, and I _am not leaving again._ ”

“Pete—.” Zeke closed his eyes, his face still pinched, but Burke could feel some of the tension leaving the angel. “Don’t make promises you won’t be happy keeping. Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear.”

Burke shook his head. “I’m not, Zeke. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.” He glanced toward Virdon then pitched his voice lower. “About what you said about chasing this crazy pipedream. About what Grul said about letting go. I’m listening, Zeke. Even to all that stuff Mal has said to me over the last couple of months. But it’s hard giving up on my old life, on the past. But look at this place. A tomb full of ancient soldiers who are holding onto ideologies that are long dead, for reasons they don’t remember or even understand anymore.” His voice softened. “I don’t want to turn into one of these relics, Zeke. I want to make a better life in the here and now. And I want that life to include you.”

Burke ignored the sensation in the pit of his stomach not unlike the drop at the start of a high velocity dive in a jet. He pushed ahead. “Look, I know you are going to need time once we get back to… to deal with things. But me? I got nowhere special to be and no particular time I need to be there by. When you are ready, I’ll be here.” He laid a hand over Zeke’s heart. “Feel this. Focus on it.”

Zeke nodded, and when he took a slow, deep breath, he began to project a calmness that even Burke could feel. The astronaut would pay a price later for pushing down his own physical and emotional pain, but a quick look around the room convinced him that he’d done what was necessary to break the spiral of negative empathic energy between Zeke and the others. Josh let Kezia lead him away from Jed’s body to care for his need for water and food. It was enough for now.

******

Even though she was expecting it, Eliana still jumped when the assault began. The motors that controlled the door mechanism whined at the attempt to force them open. Deep in the walls, the echoes of gears clanking and metal stressing reverberated. Her rifle was instantly in her hands as she ducked behind stacked crates that formed a barricade in front of where Gabe worked. In her peripheral vision, she saw the others take refuge behind other barriers, their weapons at the ready. The door didn’t budge. Yet.

“Gabe?” she called out anxiously.

“Almost there!” he answered.

A shower of sparks erupted from a spot in the center of the door at about head height. A blob of molten metal bubbled from the spot and immediately hardened into a ridge beneath it. The sparks separated, moving apart but connected by a glowing red line.

“They’re going to cut through!” Burke shouted from somewhere to Eliana’s left. The cuts quickly turned corners and began to descend toward the floor.

She glanced behind her. “We are running out of time, Gabe!” If Gabe couldn’t get this crazy plan to work, her people would be trapped with no escape. She’d let them be backed into a corner. Fear and doubt rolled in her gut. How many more of her friends would die before she won them free of this place?

The molten lines touched the floor and the thick slab fell inward, clanking dully as it hit the floor. A curtain of smoke obscured the gap. Three canisters billowing more smoke rolled through the fog. They had all donned respirator gear earlier against an expected gas attack to which the androids would be immune.

After a few moments, one of the soldiers ducked into the doorway and sprayed the room with a quick burst from a rifle before retreating back out of sight. An answering volley from one of the Albans followed him. Eliana took a deep breath and forced herself to lean back out from behind her cover. This stand-off would not last forever. When the soldiers realized the gas was ineffective, they would have to rush the opening. All those bullets flying in such an enclosed space—

As the moments ticked by and stretched into what felt like an eternity, she could hear the others begin to shift restlessly in the quiet that had fallen. “Gabe?” she asked hopefully, turning her head to risk a glance at where he crouched.

He sat back on his haunches. “I think that’s it,” he replied with a mix of uncertainty and wonder. “I… I think they’re all shutting down.”

“You think? I need to be sure!”

Gabe picked up the modified sensor and studied the screen. “Power levels have dropped significantly. Yes, they are all turning off.” He looked up at her, his features relaxing slightly.

Eliana closed her eyes as the rush of relief left her feeling drained. When she spoke, her voice was thick and heavy. “Great job. You just saved us all.”

As a flush rose in his face, Gabe ducked his head and turned back to his equipment. “If we can spare a few minutes, I want to delve a little deeper into their system, make sure it can’t somehow override the kill-switch command.”

“Sounds good. I don’t want these guys coming after us when we are almost clear.” She hefted her rifle again and stepped toward the still-smoky opening. Kezia, Matthias, and Nethaniah emerged from their cover and moved to join her and flattened themselves against the walls on either side of the doorway. Sweeping back and forth with her rifle, she glided into the hallway. She turned a one-eighty then slung her rifle on her shoulder by its strap.

“It’s all clear!” she called to the others. “They’re just standing here, immobilized!”

As the others began to file out, she walked up to one of the soldiers and couldn’t resist waving her hand in front of his—its—face. Its eyes were fixed open, its face frozen in a grimace. With the threat neutralized, she could examine the android. She pushed a finger into the flesh on its arm, amazed at the realistic feel.

“Eliana.” She turned. Burke clung to the edge of the doorway. His face was flushed, but the color was mottled and hectic. A sheen of sweat glistened on his skin.

“Kezia!” she called as she rushed over. She caught him as he fell over, startled by the waves of heat pouring off him. “Pete? What—?” She gently eased his limp body to the floor, cradling his head in her lap.

Kezia knelt next to them and ran a sensor over Burke. “Fever. Some kind of massive infection. I can’t tell more without real equipment. We have to get him back to the transport. I can get him stabilized there, but we really need to get back to Alba to a real healer. Alan needs real treatment, too.”

“Is it contagious?” Eliana asked. A terrible thought occurred to her—had the androids released some sort of biological agent against them? “Could it be something in the air here?”

Concentration creased Kezia’s brow as she tapped a different setting into the scanner. “I—I don’t think so. I’m not detecting any pathogens in the air. If it’s contagious, we’re all exposed already.”

Eliana looked around at the crowd who had gathered around her. “All right. Time to go home.”


End file.
